


what you do to me in the night

by spottswood (canyouseemyspark)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Character of Color, Female Friendship, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Historical References, Male-Female Friendship, Mutual Pining, No Guarma, Period Typical Attitudes, Prostitution, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Room
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-11-03 21:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 63,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17885807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canyouseemyspark/pseuds/spottswood
Summary: I have begun to long for you,I who have no greedI have begun to ask for you,I who have no need.-Avalanche, by Leonard CohenYuna, a young Japanese immigrant, travels to New Hanover to look for her brother. Along the way, she encounters the Van der Linde gang and it becomes more difficult to imagine getting home again.Complete. Sequel in progress:what you do to me in the night.





	1. I

Yuna was 18 when she first stepped foot on the mainland of the United States.

The boat ride from Hawaii was brutal. She was cramped in a cabin made for two with thirteen other women; she was too anxious and wary to fight with anyone, and waited outside while other women did the fighting over the four ratty beds. Yuna silently took the empty spot she could find on the floor with barely enough room to sit down, resting her back against the wall of the cabin, waking up every morning sore and pained.

Sitting upright helped with the seasickness though; the other women were at least thoughtful enough at least to run out to the deck whenever they had to throw up, and do their business into the water. They were all sorts of women - teenagers who looked younger than her, frightened and skinny, middle aged women with greying hair, a few that reminded her of her grandmother - but all of them were immigrants. They spoke amongst each other in their own languages and dialects as the journey progressed; sometimes laughing, getting to know each other, braiding each other’s hair, bonding; other times angry and cross over disagreements like taking up too much room on the floor or not emptying out the pot they were using for urinating. 

There was only one other Japanese woman, around Yuna’s age. She spoke no English and Yuna spoke no Japanese. Yuna understood her -  _ what’s your name, how old are you, what are you going to do in America, where is your family _ \- but could only answer in English, and soon the girl stopped trying.

It was for the best, she thought to herself. There was no point to making friends. She had been sent to the mainland by her family to find her brother and bring him back to Hawaii; the girl couldn’t be any help to her, and she was in no place to help anyone else. 

When she stepped off the boat, she didn’t look back. The ship dropped them off in California, and she was a long ways off yet from New Hanover where her brother’s last letter had come from. It may have been faster to travel through New Austin but despite the knife she carried in her boot, she’d never had to use it before, and New Austin was too wild for a single woman traveling alone, much less an immigrant woman. She had no horse either, and though the gold coins her father had given her were sown into the hem of her skirt, sat heavy and weighed her down, she preferred not to use them unless she was desperate.

She carried nothing except for a satchel with some cash, a bar of soap, a brush for her hair and a couple of bottles of health cures. Nothing so precious that it would hurt her much if she was robbed. Everything else she owned in the world was  _ on _ her; underneath her dress was another one, under that a pair of pants and a blouse, underneath that three pairs of underwear, and over it all a blue coat for winter. 

Yuna was sweating as she waited for the stagecoach underneath the California sun. 

To New Hanover and back, she reminded herself, it would be as easy as that.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, gang.  
> Farewell, Valentine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: some mentions of rape

Yuna stayed in Valentine for far longer than she planned.

She had spent three weeks on the ship from Hawaii, another three making her slow journey into New Hanover and finally to Valentine. The journey had been uneventful, thankfully. She travelled only during the day, and only on coaches with families or young women, most of whom did not even so much as smile or nod hello to her. There were enough East Asian immigrants in California that she was not a novelty, just another part of the landscape, another newcomer to this land.

She marked the passage of time down in her journal, kept track of how much money she was going through, and was encouraged by it. There was enough for four months - three of those for traveling, one to find Kenji - but she was stretched it out, eating one meal a day instead of two, sleeping under the stars instead of in a hotel, in case her brother proved more stubborn than she hoped he would be after a year spent living alone in the wild.

Yuna arrived in Valentine filthy and tired. Bathing out in the open in rivers or streams was too risky, and she had not wanted to waste money on renting a bathtub. She fit right in; the town was dusty and dirty and smelled of horse manure. No one gave her so much as a second look, though she stunk of sweat, though her boots were caked in mud and her yellow dress had turned black.

How could her brother stand it here? It was so far away from the lush forests of Hawaii, from the clear air of the plantation where her family worked, where it smelled of fruit and flowers and everything good in the world. The workers smiled at each other there, joked and laughed and loved, cooked Japanese food, built shrines and prayed together. Here, everyone seemed to scowl, to avoid eye contact and practically growl at you if you forced it.

Yuna had friends at home, girls who she whispered to in the cane fields as they worked, laughed with and braided each other’s hair. There were dances they organized on Sundays in the workers’ camps, where she held hands with handsome boys, and snuck off to the tree line at night to kiss and touch. They called her beautiful in the dark, ran their fingers through her long black hair, snuck her love letters while they worked. She was never without a partner as a teenager, without some sweet affair.

She was invisible here. The men of Valentine did not so much as give her a second look, and for that she was grateful. For them she was entirely forgettable, something foreign and unsavory, unmemorable.

It was only when she arrived at the hotel in Valentine that she realized it had been over a month since she had last spoken to another person. Her voice was strange to hear as she spoke to man at the front desk, who responded only with a grunt as she handed him the money for the room and a bath.

Those first days in Valentine were some of the saddest and loneliest of her life. Kenji’s last letter to her family had been scribbled on the back of an order form from the Valentine general store but when she asked the shopkeeper if he had seen a Japanese man in this area, he said he couldn’t tell one Asian apart from the other. He was patient nonetheless as she described her brother, what he might have been wearing, how he might have spoken, but offered her no information.

It struck her in that moment that it might not be so easy to find Kenji after all. Her plan had not extended beyond this; it was her one lead, she imagined the shopkeeper would point her towards some ranch or stable where her brother was working, they would reunite, finish up whatever business he had here, and go home. Yuna had not let herself imagine that it might be more complicated than that.

Something must have shown on her face, some flicker of disappointment or fear, because the shopkeeper’s gaze softened.

“Here, kid,” He said, reaching behind the counter for a pad and pencil, “You can write a note for him and I’ll keep it here by the register in case he comes by again. You do know how to write, don’t you?”

Yuna nodded wordlessly and took the pencil in her hand. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to write.

_Kenji, I’m here at the Valentine Hotel. Y._

She handed the paper back to shopkeeper who, as promised, folded it so it was small enough tucked it into the front of the cash register.

“Thank you,” Yuna murmured.

“Hey, before you leave, take this,” The shopkeeper grabbed some things from the shelf behind him and dropped them on the counter: a bag of coffee, a pack of cigarettes, a couple of fresh apples. “Looks like you’re in for the long haul.”

Yuna looked at the man warily. She could not read his intentions behind his passive expression; she wasn’t willing to pay for this, she didn’t smoke and had some cans in a pack in her room, and wasn’t willing to come to any other arrangement with this middle aged white man. She would go home before she got that desperate.

“Just take it, kid,” The man said, almost annoyed at her hesitation.

She gave him another curt _thank you_ , took the bag and left the shop. She lingered on the porch for a few moments, trying to think of her next step. Nothing came to her except a panicked feeling which settled in the silence of her mind. If she couldn’t find Kenji then she couldn’t go home, and if she couldn’t go home then she would run out of money, and if she ran out of money then she would have to think of some way to make more. She couldn’t go back without him, she wouldn’t.

Yuna wandered down the main street, beginning to think of where to go next, who to ask next, trying to calm herself, think clearly and rationality.

It had begun to rain, and the drama of that almost made her smile. _It suits my mood, anyway_ , she thought.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of shouts and of bottles and wood breaking coming from the saloon. A man was thrown out of the window and another followed him through the doors. Soon, they were wrapped around each other in a violent embrace, punching, blocking and hitting. They were rolling in the mud practically at her feet and as she instinctually took a step back, beginning to emerge from the daze, the doors of the saloon swung open again and a small crowd emerged, cheering and jostling for a prime spot to watch the men fight.

“I told you this’d be fun, didn’t I?”

The remark came from a large man in a flannel shirt, leaning up against the porch of the saloon. Two other men stood near him, smiles on their faces. They were better dressed than the heavy set man, younger and slimmer. _Handsome_ , she thought numbly. They were also the first and only non-white people she had seen in the town.

“You okay there, Arthur?” One of them called out. His black hair was almost as long as hers, pulled away from his face. A huge gun (pistol? shotgun? Yuna didn’t know the difference) hung off his holster.

“Yeah, I got this son of a bitch,” One of the fighters responded, the younger, fitter one with dark blonde hair.

“Don’t go easy on him!” The long-haired man with the gun responded, smiling again now.

“Come on Arthur, he’s a moron,” The other one shouted with an accented voice, now sitting on the steps of the saloon.

A gun hung from his holster too, and Yuna decided it was time to leave. She had seen men fight before but not like this, not when there were weapons involved, not when people crowded and cheered them on rather than tried to defuse it.

The man on the steps with the mustache caught her looking at him and held her gaze. It startled her; there was no malice in his look, just playfulness. It was a look she’d gotten many times before from the more flirtatious boys she worked with. But it was the first time a man had looked at her, _really_ looked at her, since she arrived to the mainland.

She broke his gaze and turned to go. Now it really was time to leave.

“Hey, where are you going?” He called after her, “We got drinks waiting after this.”

Yuna heard his laughter and didn’t turn around.

“Nice to meet you too, lady,” He shouted after her, “I’m Javier. What’s your name?”

She felt his eyes on her as she walked to the hotel, and felt young again.

* * *

Yuna wasted another month in that town, another month of time and money and energy trying to track down Kenji. She set off at dawn each morning and began with the ranches furthest away from the center of town. It was slow going without a horse, but each day she reminded herself it wouldn’t be long now, it wouldn’t be worth it to waste money on a horse that she would just sell in a few weeks when it was time to go home with Kenji.

She moved like a ghost through the dry countryside, speaking to ranch hands and maids, describing Kenji each day, multiple times a day. Each time they would shake their heads, sometimes sympathetically, sometimes dismissively, and send her on her way. There were some days when she passed by the same men twice on her way to the next ranch over, but they didn’t seem to recognize her; she was nothing and nobody to them. No wonder they couldn’t remember her brother.

The sheriff’s office was the only place she hadn’t checked yet, and the one place she had been avoiding, where she would have loved nothing more than for someone to tell her that they had never seen her brother.

She was running short on cash, though, had begun to wear her boots down and with them her hope too. Her father’s gold still sat heavy in her dress but she felt weighted down by more than that now, by a sadness that had her waking up later each day and sleeping earlier each night, a fog of depression rolling in. To go home without Kenji meant to destroy her family; it meant her father would break his contract to come to find him, it meant they would have to steal away from the plantation, that her father would be chased down by the company until they were found, or starved on their own in the wild. To stay here alone and search for him meant just that, to be alone, to be invisible, not to smile or speak or take pleasure in day spent with friends, a night spent in the forest, until she found him.

It was in this moment of desperation that she dragged herself to the sheriff's office on an early Sunday morning.

It was as dark and grim as she expected. A man was laying in one of the cells, one leg crossed over the other, his hat tipped over his face, looking exceptionally relaxed for someone who had just been arrested. A deputy sat in a chair outside the cell, smoking a cigarette. He tipped his hat to her when she walked in.

The sheriff sat behind the desk, his feet stretched out on the table, a newspaper in his hands. He folded it in his lap when he saw her walk in.

“How can I help you, miss?” He asked.

“I’m looking for a man, and I was hoping you might be able to help me.”

Before she could continue, the deputy threw something into the cell, which bounced with a clank.

“Looks like you got a visitor,” He said with a laugh.

Yuna had no patience today for men who thought they were funny. The prisoner didn’t seem to either; he warily removed his hat from his head, and sat up to look at her with an arched eyebrow.

He looked much better than he had the first time she’d seen him, sprawled out in the mud, taking and returning punches with the bald man from the saloon. His beard was shorter, his hair slicked back and his clothes clean. _Arthur_ , she remembered, _one of the men had called him Arthur_. She supposed a man who got into fistfights in the streets was as likely as anyone to get arrested.

“No, not him,” She responded, turning back to the sheriff, who was smirking too, “I’m looking for my brother.”

The sheriff sat up, “That’s a shame. The son of a bitch over there won’t tell us his name, though I ‘xpect we’ll get it out of him soon enough, with some _motivation_.” The last word was almost dripping with venom. He motioned to the bounty posters hung around him, “Your brother, miss, he a degenerate or a victim?”

“He’s neither, I mean, I don’t think, I hope he’s not,” Yuna responded clumsily, thrown off by the question even as she began to eye the posters, “He was in town about three months ago. He was staying at a camp outside of the town, he wrote in a letter he was looking for work on one of the ranches but I’ve asked around and no one seems to have seen him. He was Japanese, like me. I was wondering whether you might have heard of someone like that passing through. His name is Kenji.”

The sheriff sighed, and Yuna guessed his answer.

“This is a livestock town, miss, we get all sorts of people here, lookin’ to make some fast cash in the auctions or just raise some hell,” He replied, indicating the prisoner. Arthur seems to be listening, but not particularly caring, “Unless his face is up on this wall or he’s sittin’ in a cell, there ain’t much I can do to help you.”

 _So this is it,_ she thought, _my last hope gone_. She felt as though she might cry, but the thought of falling apart in front of these three indifferent men was too much humiliation for her to bear.

“Thank you,” She said, _for nothing_ , she wanted to add.

Yuna walked to the door but as she pulled the knob, someone was pushing it to get in. She stepped back to let them through and instead was met with a gun, pointed at her chest.

The man holding it wore a black bandana and there was another behind him, wearing a similar one. She noticed nothing else except for the feel of the metal through her dress. There was a momentary flash of surprise in his eyes that gave way to a steely, determined look as he pushed her along with his gun until they were all inside and the door closed behind them.

As quick as lightning, the deputy and the sheriff were on their feet, and just as quick the first man was on the sheriff, holding him from the back, disarming him and pointing a gun to his head. The other one stood between her and the door; though his gun was pointed at the deputy, his eyes were on her.

Yuna stood dumbly in the middle of it all, her hands at her sides. She felt nothing, neither fear nor panic nor anger, just an empty feeling which gnawed at her stomach. _Don’t throw up_ , she told herself, _don’t throw up_.

“You,” The first man said, looking at the deputy. He was broader, she noticed now, black haired and spoke with a commanding voice, “Please release my friend, before anyone gets shot.”

The deputy reached for his keys, tried to unhook them and in a panic dropped them on the floor. The prisoner, Arthur, had stood up inside his cell.

The second man didn’t move his eyes from her. He was searching for something on her face and as Yuna stared back at him, she understood. _He’s trying to know if I recognize him_ , she thought, and she did, oh god she did. It was the man on the porch, the one who had tried to flirt with her over the fight. _Javier_ , she recalled, and was too slow to hide it. His brown eyes narrowed.

The deputy had finally gotten his hands back on his keys and unlocked the cell. Arthur grabbed him as he did so, throwing him into the cell to take his place. The other man walked the sheriff over, the gun not leaving his temple until he was inside with the deputy, the cell door locked.

“You’ll hang for this,” The sheriff spat.

Javier’s gun was now pointed on her.

“Leave the girl alone,” Arthur said, as he grabbed his holster and gun from within the sheriff’s clip, as well as a money clip that lay on the top.

“She knows our names,” Javier replied, “You know our names, don’t you?”

 _No,_ she wanted to say, _I don’t know you_ , _let me go_. She said nothing instead, frozen as in a nightmare.

“We don’t have time for this,” Arthur snapped. The black haired man was fingering his gun in a way that made her want to sink into the ground.

“Let’s take her with us,” The black hair man said,, “We’ll blindfold her when we get out of town. You won’t scream, will you sweetheart?"

Arthur let out an exasperated sigh but said nothing as Javier grabbed her and pulled her through the back door of the jail. Three horses were waiting there, and she let herself go limp as a doll as he lifted her up on his horse.

She tried to remember what she had heard growing up, what to do if a man tried to hurt you, if one of the overseers took a shine to you. It was too dangerous to try to fight back, they would just kill you. _You should piss yourself_ , one of the older women had told them, _it’ll make them go limp and they’ll leave you alone, at least for a bit. Hide away somewhere inside of yourself,_ another woman had said, one who hadn’t been as lucky.

“You have nothing to fear, miss,” Arthur said, “No one is going to hurt you.”

“You might want to hold on,” Javier chuckled.

With that, the three men took their horses into a gallop, cutting through the back of the town, through the fields and away from Valentine.


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuna has no choice.

Somewhere outside Valentine, Javier stopped his horse and turned to wrap his bandana around Yuna’s eyes. He put her hat on her and had her lean deeper into his back so that it might hide her veiled eyes and to a stranger passing by look like she was only sleeping.

Yuna tried to keep track of the time as they rode on. She tried to count the seconds but lost track shortly afterwards, as the men began to talk amongst themselves.

“How’d you boys find me?” Arthur asked.

“I’ve known you twenty years, Arthur,” the black-haired man with the distinctive deep voice responded, “When you go missing, I check the saloon, and if you ain’t there, I check the jail.”

The men laughed.

“Fair enough.”

They rode for a while further. At another point, the horses stopped and she felt a pair of hands on her waist, coming from the side. She should have screamed; she told herself to scream, to shout, to kick her heels into the horse until it bucked, threw her and Javier off to give herself a chance to get away.

Instead, all she could do was let herself go limp.

“Come on, now, we ain’t gonna hurt you,” Arthur said softly.

He had put her on the horse in front of him, wrapped his arms aroufnd her to hold onto the reins.

“I’ll take that,” Javier said, with laughter in his voice, and plucked his hat from her head.

There was only silence after that, no more chatter, as they continued their ride.

He smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke and pomade. His stubble scratched against the side of her face. It was the closest she had ever been to a strange man. She was used to the sliding of young men’s bodies against hers as they danced, the feel of a hand in her own, a caress or a kiss on her cheek; all the sweet things from boys she’d grown up with, who worked in the fields alongside her, who would never hurt her. She had been lucky, had been protected by the older women, who kept the young girls away from the more brutal overseers. And now that she was pulled close against this strange man, her mind and body did not know how to react. She’d never feared men before, except in the abstract way all women do, but to be this close to the source of her fear was foreign and terrifying and paralyzing.

The horses came to a stop after a while, and there were hushed whispers exchanges between them which she couldn’t make out, though she heard the sound of one set of hoofbeats coming closer and the sounds of some others galloping away. It felt like an eternity of waiting.

“You can take your blindfold off now.” Arthur’s voice came from behind her. She pulled it down so it was around her neck and looked around.

They were in the middle of a wooded area, the sun still high in the sky. They must not have travelled very far from the town, so why did it feel like a lifetime ago that she was in that jail, asking about Kenji? A distant sound of laughter filled the empty trees and it smelled like someone was cooking pork, but there was no one but her and Arthur on his horse. Javier and the third man had left.

“Now I’m gonna ask you to get off the horse, miss, and stand right here over by this tree while I get off and hitch her,” He spoke slowly, as though he were talking to an idiot, “I’ve been sitting in that cell for two days, I’m in a foul mood and I ask you kindly not to run so I don’t have to chase ya through these damn woods.”

Yuna nodded. She didn’t want to think of what he would do once he caught her so she obeyed, slid off the horse clumsily and landed on the soft ground on her feet with a thud.

Arthur followed her, hitching the horse to a nearby tree, and stood in front of her, his hands on his waist. _He looks tired_ , she thought, _and sad._ There was no hungry look in his eyes, the kind even the sweetest of boys got when kisses grew heated and they began to think of what might come next.

“Now, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t have brought you along for this ride,” He reached into his jacket pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a folded up piece of paper. He offered her one, wordlessly, but when she shook her head, lit one up for himself. “But my friend Javier seemed to think you know our names. I reckon I agree with him. Now, what _I_ would have done is waited until nightfall, sent someone to the Valentine hotel, room 113?” He took a long drag from his cigarette and looked at her until she nodded. “Sent them there with a 30 dollars and asked you nicely not to go to the sheriff. With all due respect, miss, you seem down on your luck and 30 bucks might have done a lot for you, more than riding blindfolded on the back of a horse.”

She thought of the gold in her dress and was relieved she hadn’t spent it, had continued to wear the same worn out pair of boots, the same faded clothes all this time.

“But my friends like pretty girls and thought they might get you out here in these woods, get a hot meal in your belly, share some whiskey and a song, and you’d be so grateful they ain’t kill you that you’d give them your promise and perhaps a little bit more,” He drawled, “That might have worked, depending on what to sort of woman you are, except we got ourselves a complication."

He handed her the piece of paper, his fingers brushing against hers as she took it. “A reward of $25 will be paid for the arrest of a black-haired Oriental woman wanted for associating with known criminals in the Valentine area. The above amount will be paid immediately for the arrest of the prisoner. Wanted ALIVE for questioning.” In the middle was a crudely drawn almost-caricature of an East Asian woman.

It took her a moment to realize it was meant to be her.

“That doesn’t even look like me,” Yuna blurted out.

Arthur laughed abruptly at that. It was warm laugh that seemed to start somewhere deep in his stomach. She realized her hands were shaking and could do nothing to stop them.

“Don’t take it personal, they never get those drawings right,” He replied, smiling. _How many wanted posters has his face been on? And for what?_

He flicked his cigarette on the ground, looked at her hands and then her eyes, “It looks like you’ve only got two choices. You ain’t going back to Valentine, not anymore. You can walk away now and I promise you, miss, no one will follow you. You might last for a week or two in the wild, risk coming across animals or snakes or some unsavory characters, if the law don’t catch you first. Or, we can walk half a mile into the woods to our camp. We’ll get a hot meal in you, a change of clothes and a clean bedroll to sleep on with the other women until we figure out a better way out of this goddamn mess. What’ll it be, miss?”

Yuna opened her mouth to speak and instead bent over, and vomited on his boots.

Arthur sighed, “I guess that means you need to think on it?”

* * *

Arthur didn’t speak to her much after that. He sat down beside her, his back against a tree trunk, writing and drawing in a journal he took out of his satchel.

Yuna didn’t hyperventilate, or weep. She counted to fifty in her mind to calm down, did that again a few times before she could _think_.

She’d come all the way here to find Kenji, to bring him home. Her only lead was in Valentine. She had to go back to Valentine. But there was no one there who knew him, or who remembered him. She would have had to move on soon but to go where? She wouldn’t return without him. She would have bought a horse maybe, travelled wider, to other towns nearby. Maybe she would have found him there. And if she didn’t, how long would she keep looking? Half a year, a year, two?

She couldn’t last on her own, on the run. She knew no one in America. If she turned herself into the sheriff, there would be no one to post her bail, no one to break her out like Arthur’s friends had done for him. Would the sheriff believe her if she told him she didn’t know them, that all she’d done was look at a handsome man sitting on a porch? Or would the sheriff, ashamed to be locked in his own cell by outlaws in front of a silent woman that didn’t deny knowing them, want to make an example out of her?

And what did it mean to travel with a gang? It was clear now to her that this was a gang, even plantation workers in Hawaii had heard stories about outlaws roaming the wild mainland, shooting and robbing and killing and being hanged for it. Arthur didn’t seem the type to hurt a woman for pleasure, but she didn’t know that for sure, didn’t know whether the men he traveled with had the same principles. Would she be expected to ride with them? Yuna had no skills beside farming, mending clothes, doing the laundry for the workers. She wasn’t a thief or a killer.

She sat silently and thought and tried to bury the panic. Arthur put his journal away after a while and as the sun set and the air grew cold built a fire for them. _I can’t even do that_ , Yuna thought. She had always relied on the safety of the plantation, the routine set by the overseers, a roof over her head and three meals a day in exchange for 14 hours cutting sugarcane.

There were outlaws sitting around a campfire too, somewhere nearby in these now dark woods. There were also other men, likely nearby too, men who would hurt a woman traveling alone, men who rape and kill and torture. Out of the frying pan, into the fire she must go.

Shortly after sunset, a man shouted out from in the woods, in an unfamiliar voice.

“Arthur, it’s me.”

“Over here!”

He emerged from the tree-line. In the light of their fire, Yuna could tell it was the long haired man she had seen that day outside the saloon. He had worn a blue shirt then and had his hair pulled back. Tonight, his hair fell over his shoulders and he was wearing a grey coat, the collar pulled up against his face. A gun hung at his side.

“This is my friend, Charles,” Arthur said, watching Yuna as she warily watched the new arrival, “But you already knew that.”

She didn’t, she knew his face but not his name. Charles nodded at her.

“Dutch asked me to get you,” Charles turned to look at Yuna, “Are you ready, miss?”

She was. She had never had any real choice.

“Yes, I’m ready.”

* * *

She met them all that first night, was introduced to men named Dutch, Hosea, Swanson, Pearson, Uncle, Leopold, and John, and women called Mary Beth, Karen, Miss Grimshaw, Tilly, Molly, Sadie and Abigail. There was even a little boy and a dog running around. She remembered their names but couldn’t connect them to the faces. The only ones she knew where those men she had seen that day outside of the saloon; Javier smiled at her from across the fire, Bill was the heavyset man in flannel standing guard a ways outside the camp, and Arthur went straight for the stew and then to his bed without another word.

No one seemed very interested in her. A man stood at the center of the camp, dressed in black, smoking a cigar and watching her but he said nothing, did nothing.

Charles led her through the mess of tents and blankets spread on the ground, taking her behind the wagon where she would be sleeping. There were other bedrolls there, but one had a folded set of clothes on it and a bowl of water sitting on it. She figured that was meant for her.

“The women sleep here. No one will bother you,” He explained, and she knew what he meant. His voice was smooth and soft. “In the morning, Miss Grimshaw will take you to Dutch.”

She didn’t ask him for what; it didn’t matter. She was living her on their charity, on their will. It didn’t matter what they wanted or who wanted it. She would have to give it or else walk out into those woods alone.

Charles did not linger. With a simple, “good night,” he headed back to the fire and to his gang.

In the dark, while those strangers laughed and sang and argued by the flames, Yuna took off her dress behind the wagon. In the dark, she used the knife in her boot to cut the hem of that dress and pull out twelve gold coins, count them in her hands and put them between the leather of her boots, where the stitching had come loose at the top. In the dark, she washed herself with the water and put on the clothes that had been laid out for her, a white shirt and a white dress.

She did not sleep, closed her eyes and lay silently, listened as the other women began to make their way to bed around them. _She’s beautiful_ , one of them whispered, giggling, _she’s like ones of them gems of beauty cards_ . _Is she Javier’s?_ Another voice responded, stern, _she’s nobody’s, she’s just like the rest of you._


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beginning to learn.

Dutch poured her coffee when she was in his tent, offered her chocolates, and watched her. The woman who had woken her, Miss Grimshaw, sat in the corner, and all around them Yuna could hear the sounds of the gang members begin to wake up, to move around the camp.

_ A few weeks ago, we ran into another young lady who had run into some tough times _ , he had explained,  _ Miss Sadie Adler had a home again now, a family, a purpose. You’re welcome to speak to her should you have any doubts. She’s welcome to stay as long as she wants, leave whenever she desires, just like everyone else here. Just like you. _

An Englishman that delivered food to the plantation in Hawaii had told her and her brother as children of the story of Robin Hood. It was a lovely story, lovelier still to hear when you’re poor. Robin Hood, the hero, the archer, the swordsman, “king of outlaws and prince of good fellows,” who would take from the rich and give to the poor. 

Dutch seemed like an American Robin Hood. As much as she left he was something out of a storybook, a bitter voice inside her remindered her she’d been kidnapped.  _ No, I could have left last night, could leave anytime.  _ Could leave to my death, the voice replied.

“What is your sad story, miss?” Dutch asked.

“I don’t have one,” Yuna replied. Mrs. Grimshaw scoffed at that.

Dutch smiled, “That’s a beautiful thing. What I mean to ask is, who are you? Where are you from? Who is your family?”

_ I’m nobody, so why lie? _

“My name is Yuna Kuwano. I was born in Japan. My father worked on sugarcane plantation in Hawaii and my mother sent my brother and me to live with him when I was 9 years old. My brother, Kenji, came to the mainland to make his own way, but we haven’t heard from him in months,” Yuna began.

Dutch interrupted, still smiling, “And you’re here to look for him?”

How can you explain what family meant to a man who had been born in this country? How could you explain what it was for her father, who spoke no English, who had worked in the fields his whole life, sending his money to a wife he hardly knew and children he didn’t remember in Japan? How could you explain what the loss of child in a strange country meant? It was enough to risk losing his other child over.

“Yes.”

“I will tell my men to keep their ears pinned to the ground for any word of your brother, I promise you that,” Dutch said, reaching for her hand in her lap and squeezing it. “Now, we’re a large family here, as you can see, and everyone has to do their part. Do you have any particular  _ talents _ ?”

_ Nobody eats here for free,  _ Miss Grimshaw’d told her when she woke up in the morning. Maybe that was her way of preparing Yuna for this inevitable question.

“I can do laundry, I can clean, mend clothes and shoes,” Yuna replied, Dutch’s eyes on her, searching for something else, “I can fish, gut it and cook it. And, and, I can learn.”

Miss Grimshaw interjected, “She’s a farmgirl, never run a hustle but she's pretty.”

“And that’s usually the half of it,” Dutch laughed, “Welcome to the family.”

Yuna pondered over those words as Miss Grimshaw led her out of the tent, to the edge of camp on the women’s side where a basket sat in the grass, filled with clothes. Beside it sat a cloth bag, washboard and a bar of soap. The other women were still laying down by the wagon; Miss Grimshaw gave them a dirty look, but no one was awake yet to see it.

Would she be able to steal, if it came down to it? On the plantation, the punishment for stealing among some of the more brutal overseers was cutting off your hand. Her father had learned that the hard way. If stealing meant taking something that wasn’t yours, they were all guilty. The land all around them belonged to the plantation owner, but they would take papayas and dragon fruit right off the tree. They fished in the beach that belonged to him too. There wasn’t much else to steal, and no opportunity to do it; there were a few shops outside the workers’ homes where they could travel on Sundays, but they were mostly owned by immigrant merchants and it felt cruel to steal from them.

Good outlaws, the type she heard stories about, stole from banks and robbed stagecoaches and other gangs, took from  _ things _ , companies, not people. Yuna could think of it abstractly now, but if it came down to it, could she do it?  

She wouldn’t have to worry about that now, at least. All she had to worry about for now was doing some laundry. 

“Charles will take you down to the river. When you’re back, hang the clothes out to dry and come see me for some mending. Got it?” Miss Grimshaw asked,  _ commanded _ .

“Yes.”

“When one of these useless men tops off the water wagon, you won’t be going to the river anymore, understood?”

“Yes.”

They were letting her out of the camp. It was under supervision but it surprised her nonetheless, when the day before they were so cautious about having her see where it was. Was it a test? What could she even do, except maybe drown herself in that river?

Miss Grimshaw turned and walked towards the sleeping women.

“Get up!” She hollered, “You ain’t princesses in fairytales. There’s work to do. Get up!”

One of the women cursed at Miss Grimshaw, which earned her a kick in the side. Yuna focused on the task at hand. She opened the bag and began to load it with the dirty laundry. It stunk of mud and sweat, nothing she wasn’t used to, except for the sheer amount of bloodstains. Some of the men’s shirts were in such bad shape that she wondered whether they had belonged to the murdered men.

By the time Charles arrived, she was done. He wore a simple white shirt today, an intricate beaded necklace visible over it, and carried nothing visible except for the gun on his hip.

“Morning.”

“Good morning,” She responded. 

“Need help with that?” He asked, pointed to the full bag. 

Yuna nodded and let him take it. She grabbed the washboard and the soap and followed him wordlessly around camp, through the back and to where the horses were hitched. There was a man tied to a tree, sleeping, leaning forward against his constraints. Why hadn’t she noticed him the night before? He looked filthy and half dead. She wanted to run to help him and run away from him all at once. 

_ Who are these people? Where am I? _

Charles loaded the bag onto the back of a pretty horse with grey spots, hung the washboard on the side and put the soap in one of the saddlebags. He greeted his horse, patting its neck, and it seemed to turn towards him in response as though to say,  _ hello there _ .

“Do you know how to get on a horse by yourself?”

He was so matter of fact in his manner that Yuna didn’t feel ashamed to admit it.

“I don’t think so.”

She thought he would lift her up like Javier had, but instead he reached over to his horse and dropped the stirrups a few holes. 

“Grab the reins,” He instructed, and she obeyed gingerly, “Grab the right side a little tighter. Face forward and put your left foot in the stirrup. Do you have a good grip?” She did, or thought she did and nodded. “Push off on your right leg, don’t pull up on the reins, just use them to balance.” Yuna followed his instructions, and hung over the side of the horse. “Alright, swing your right leg up.” 

Yuna hesitated. She was wearing a skirt, and in the awkwardness of the movement might show him more than her legs.  _ He’s an outlaw _ , she reminded herself,  _ what does he care? He’s seen far more than a woman’s legs _ .

Pulling her skirt up to her mid thighs, Yuna swung her leg up over the saddle, she settled into the backside of it, adjusting her skirt to cover her upper thighs. The horse was gentle and stayed steady under her, stayed still as Charles readjusted the stirrup and climbed in front of her in a single graceful movement.

Ladies rode side saddle, Yuna had seen women in Valentine riding behind their men. In Hawaii, only the overseers had owned horses but she’d ridden a mule before that belonged to one of the merchants whose son was keen on her. She’d pulled up her dress as she did now, and felt no shame at it.  _ I’m not a lady _ ,  _ I never will be _ .  _ I’m living with outlaws and I will learn to live like them. _

He was a larger man than Arthur or Javier and Yuna found herself pressed tighter against him than she had the others, her chest flush against his back. Seeing her exposed legs swinging around his horse as they began their descent from the camp, it was easy to think for a moment that she was elsewhere, to fantasize of a different sort of life.  _ She was back home - _ if she looked down at the grass beneath them, she could imagine she was in the forest _ \- and she had gone for a ride with a handsome man she’d met at a dance, a man who had come from far away. They were going for a picnic in a secluded spot where they could talk, where he would ask her to sing for him. He would ask if he could hold her hand and she would let him _ .

Lost in this fantasy, this escape from reality, she didn’t notice how they got into the main road. Men on horses rode past them without saying hello, sometimes throwing them a nasty look but mostly ignoring them.  _ What do they see when they look at us?  _ A Japanese woman and a black man? A husband and wife going about their chores? Something they no doubt found disgusting.

She heard the water before she saw it and once she did, she saw there were other women spread out along the river bank with their laundry, some with their children, but others alone.

Charles slid from his horse first. 

“Come down the way you came up,” He said, and she tried. 

He hadn’t adjusted the stirrups, however, and her landing was unbalanced. It didn’t matter; in an instant he was there, catching her before she could land painfully on her ankle. There was a moment, or perhaps only a second, when they were chest to chest, her nose awkwardly blushing against the side of his cheek. Charles didn’t seem to notice though, or if he did, he didn’t seem to care. His expression was impenetrable as he set her down and took the the laundry bag down, handing her the washboard and the soap silently.

Another man might have laughed at their near contact, or pulled her closer. Charles did neither of those things.

He let her take the lead after that. Horse riding may be one of his skills, but washing laundry was hers. She took off her boots, carefully setting them on a high rock, and settling in a low spot at the edge of the water. The water was cool and not unpleasant; she pulled her dress up to her knees and let the water wash over her. It was the closest she would get to a real bath until she found someone willing to take her to hotel in a nearby town. 

Charles had settled on a nearby rock away from the water, focused on something he was whittling with a knife.

Yuna got to work and got to thinking.

They might help her find her brother, these men who traveled far and wide, who met all sorts of people and went to all sorts of places. It was a naive sort of hope, but they had as much of a chance of running into him as she did wandering around on her own, now that the Valentine lead had dried up. How long would it take? 

When she thought about time, an anxious feeling settled in the middle of her chest, took a hold of her heart. Her life up until now had been ruled by an overseer’s whistle, directing her when to wake up, when to work, when the eat, when to sleep. The thought of an open expanse of time, of days without the security of routine, was suffocating.

_ I’ll give it 30 days.  _ Thinking in increments was more manageable.  _ 30 days and I’ll decide what to do next. 30 days. _

She repeated the number to herself like a mantra, over and over, as she scrubbed.

When she was five shirts in, Charles spoke up. She had nearly forgotten he was there.

“I understand you can’t go back to Valentine,” He did not look up from what he was doing from his hands, “Is there anything you left behind there? Dutch can send someone to get it for you.”

Yuna thought about it. It felt like a lifetime ago. 

_ Will I ever sleep in a real bed again? _

“There are some cans of food in the hotel room I was staying in. There’s some clothes and a brush, and money clip in a bag with $5 in it. Some medicine too,” None of it meant anything to her now. “If anyone wants it, they can have it.”

He nodded, without looking.

“Thank you, though,” Yuna added.

She went back to the laundry and he went back to his silence.

It was a beautiful day, a beautiful place. There were birds flying overhead, and she could hear the distant chatter of women as they did their own loads further down the water; one of them was even singing. If she was at home, she would have been with friends, they would have gone into the water together, floated for hours if it was their day off, gotten out only once their skin had begun to freckle and darken in the sun and they had that warm, lazy feeling you get after spending time swimming. 

She had been excited when she first set off on her trip. Her friend Hana had asked her to bring them back some penny dreadfuls. Julieanne had asked her to bring back an American husband.  _ I wonder if I’ll ever get back at all. _

Dutch had asked her what her sad story was. She wondered what  _ his _ was, what everyone’s in this gang was. No one was born an outlaw, she realized suddenly, do they have a home they want to go back to too?

Maybe the women, but she doubted if the men did. They were dangerous, they were capable, they had survived for this long already. If they wanted to go home they would have, they could.  _ They chose this life _ .

It was a while before they spoke again.

“Dutch will want you to bring in some income for the gang,” Charles said softly, moving from where he was sitting to another rock closer to her. She might have been shy at him being so close, with her legs spread out, her skirt soaked wet and sticking to her skin, if he had not been so indifferent before. Even now, he didn’t so much as give her a glance. “He might have said it to you when you spoke this morning, or he might be waiting to speak to you later.”

“Miss Grimshaw said something about a hustle,” Yuna admitted, continuing to scrub.

Charles nodded, grimly, “You have learn, so learn from Tilly or Mary-Beth. They’re nice girls. They can teach you how to get information, without having to do any of the thieving yourself.”

That was good to know. She would have to try to figure out which of the women they were.

“What about the others?” Yuna asked. It was worth learning whatever she could, so long as he was willing to share.

He was silent, as though carefully picking his words. “Karen's quick to pull out her gun. Have you ever shot a gun before?”

He didn't mention the other women. She wondered at that.

Yuna shook her head. Would she have to learn? Who did they expect her to point it at?

“That’s alright,” He responded. On the rock beside him sat a small, wooden bear, the result of his whittling. It was a pretty and fierce little thing. Yuna didn’t notice he had begun to work on a second piece. “You won’t have to use one.”

She hoped that were true. The only weapon she’d ever used was a machete, and the victims were sugarcane stalks.

Yuna had a hundred questions to ask him. It would have been smart to ask Arthur last night, but she could barely formulate a full sentence then. He had a funny way about him, he might have humored her. Charles was more intimidating; not frightening, but impassive and unreadable. If she asked him the wrong question, he might be angry, or scold her, or stop talking to her altogether.

_ They’re all killers _ , she reminded herself,  _ I should never stop being scared of them. _

The ride back up to camp was as quiet as the trip down. Yuna tried to pay more attention this time, memorize some landmarks in case she needed to find her way out (or back) on her own, but it was hopeless. She had no way to orient herself. She knew roughly which way the river was, and where the woods were, but once Charles’ horse stepped into the thicket of trees, she was entirely disoriented.

The horse was slower, weighed down by the wet laundry, but the quiet was nice, effortless. They would be in the midst of camp soon, in the middle of strangers and their personalities and their wants. Silence was a luxury here, she already knew that.

Her skirt was dry by the time they were back at camp and Charles had hitched his horse. Her dismount was much less clumsy this time, and Charles seemed to smile a little at that, though he said nothing. He carried the bag over his shoulder and led her through the other side of camp; luckily, away from the tied up man. 

It must have been noon by now and the camp was largely empty. She spotted the man with the scarred face reading a book by the cliff’s edge. Two women were washing dishes in a barrel next to the cook - Mr. Pearson, she remembered - and another was struggling with some hay stacks. Miss Grimshaw stood by the women’s wagon, as though she had been waiting there the entire time.

“Took you long enough,” Miss Grimshaw crossed her arms over her chest. There was no real anger in her voice, though. She called out across camp, “Tilly! Come here and help.”

Tilly, who had her hands deep in the dishwashing barrel rolled her eyes but came over nonetheless, though dragging her feet a bit. Charles dropped the laundry bag under the trees where someone had hung a laundry line in their absence.

“Thank you for taking me today, Charles,” Yuna said, as Tilly opened the bag, began to remove the first of the items. Yuna realized she hadn’t introduced herself to him;  _ does he even know my name? _ Given how fast it seemed word traveled in this camp, she figured he knew more than that, knew her whole  _ sad story. _

“No problem.” He reached into one of his pockets, and removed something small. Yuna thought it was the bear he’d made, since he’d seen her looking at it, but when he held it in his palm, she could see it was a lotus, carved into the a piece of wood. “Here.”

That was all he said. 

She would usually make a show out of rejecting gifts from boys and accepting them only once they begged - usually they were small things, a pretty flower, maybe a wrapped candy, or a folded up note - but she didn’t now. Despite her daydreams when they were heading down the cliffside, she wasn’t at home and they hadn’t been picnicing on the forest floor. He was an outlaw, and they stood in the middle of his gang’s camp, and she was not being courted. He was simply being kind. He might kill someone later in the day, come back with bloodied clothes she would have to wash later, but for now he was kind.

She took it.

“Thank you.”

When she looked up, Tilly and Miss Grimshaw were staring at them and Charles had begun to walk away.

“Hey Charles!” Tilly called up, a wicked smile playing on her face, “You got one of those for me?”

He didn’t turn around, just waved his hand as though to say goodbye or bat away her comment.

Miss Grimshaw had had enough.

“Get to work!”

* * *

 

While Miss Grimshaw was within hearing distance, Yuna and Tilly didn’t do much talking as they strung up the last of the laundry. The pretty girl was sent off on some other chore soon after, and Yuna was given a needle, thread, and a pile of things to mend. She let herself get lost in the chores; her hands were callused from years working with them, and when she didn’t complain, Miss Grimshaw simply added to her pile. The camp was still empty around sunset when Mr. Pearson announced the stew was ready.

Yuna had eaten nothing but the piece of chocolate Dutch had given her since the day before, before she’d gone down the sheriff's office, before she’d been brought here. She had been too anxious to eat the night before, and today too ashamed to ask anyone for food when she’d returned from doing the laundry.

_ I have to be as small as possible _ , she’d decided,  _ as small as she’d felt since she landed in the mainland, invisible, a little mouse that could hide in the grass _ . She would do whatever was asked for her and speak only when spoken to; she would survive.

She didn’t move then, when the scarred man was the first to grab a bowl of the stew, followed by Dutch and Molly. The women she slept with went up one by one, as did the woman with the little boy. They were mostly quiet as they ate, the girls tired from a day of chores, Molly sitting apart from them, staring into her food and Dutch spoke quietly to the scarred man. She focused on the mending, ignored the pain in her stomach, breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t smell the stew. 

Charles wasn’t there; neither were Arthur, Bill, or Javier, or the other men she’d met. Lenny and Hosea, she thought, and that funny old man, Uncle.  _ Working a job _ , that’s what they called it, robbing or looking for someone to rob.

She focused on the mending, folding it and put it in Miss Grimshaw’s basket as night rolled in and the men began to wander back to camp. Hosea and Lenny came back first, talking animatedly as they headed for Dutch’s camp. Javier followed afterwards, dropped something into a box by one of the tents and went to open a bottle of whiskey. Bill was next, looking like he was in a foul mood, and finally Arthur and Charles, carrying a deer each to Mr. Pearson’s tent.

It was time for her to go to bed.

No one seemed to notice her, there were no smiles over the fire that night, no one to be introduced to, to greet. No one to ask her questions, no one to make her try to make her laugh, or ask to dance with her. It was nothing like home. She was just a visitor, a fly on the wall watching this gang, this  _ family _ . It was what she wanted to be, what would keep her safe, but the loneliness cut her.

Kenji used to say she could talk a man’s ear off. Yuna remembered how she had once loved to speak about her day, speak of the things she’d done and seen and thought of, exchange stories and laughter. In her new life, she could count on one hand how many sentences she said in a day and that was a sad thing. A sad story.

Once she finished the mending, she went behind the wagon where her bedroll had remained untouched since the morning. Someone was playing music by the fire; it was something lovely, and with it, she could let herself fall into another daydream, some fantasy that might transport her to sleep.

She had barely laid down when Tilly appeared, a bowl of stew in hand. The other girl came to lay beside her, putting the bowl between them.

“Thank you,” Yuna said, and meant it. Another act of kindness, and a much needed one at that.

“You shouldn’t be shy when it comes to the food around here,” Tilly smiled, resting on her side, her head propped up on her elbow. “There are plenty of hungry men out there, and none of them too gentlemanly when they’re tired and hungry.”

The stew was filled with potatoes and carrots and some heavy meat she couldn’t name. It didn’t matter. She ate it all and far too quickly. It was only when she dropped the spoon into the empty bowl did the pretty girl, Tilly, speak again.

“What’s it like in Hawaii?”

So word did travel fast.

“It’s green,” Yuna replied. Her body was tired from the day’s work, satisfied from the meal, and the sound of the music filling the air had relaxed her, filled her with something akin to contentment. It didn’t hurt that someone was speaking to her, either. “The water is clear and warm, and if you’re fast enough you can catch the little fish with your hands.”

“That sounds nice,” Tilly lay on her back, and both women looked up at the stars, “It sounds so far away. Do you have a sweetheart there?”

“No, no one.” And she was glad of it. It was enough to think of her brother, she had been able to store away her missing him within her worry and resentment. Missing a sweetheart would have been too much. “Do you?”

Tilly giggled and Yuna was transported to her girlhood, if only for a moment.

“No. There aren’t exactly a lot of healthy examples of relationships around camp, neither.” Yuna wondered what that meant, but didn’t ask. “Maybe someday. One day I’d like to be a real lady, have a real home in a city somewhere and a man who does something boring for a livin’.”

“One day.”

If she believed that Tilly could have some normal life one day, maybe Yuna might believe she could too. 

Charles had said Tilly was a nice girl, and she was. Yuna would have shared with her her own hopes, her dreams for her future but none came to mind. There was only a blank space.

The gang had broken out into song, and Tilly hummed along softly beside her. 

_ Survive,  _ Yuna thought,  _ think of a way to survive and then you can think of a future. _

“Charles said you might be willing to teach me some things,” Yuna tried to think of he phrased it, though didn’t know what he’d meant, not truly, “How to get information. Would you?”

Tilly didn’t hesitate, “Sure. We all had to learn sometime. You’re beautiful, men will say  _ all kinds _ of things to you.”

Yuna could hardly speak to the men in the camp, she couldn’t imagine being around strange men, men she would have to work.  _ I’ll learn _ ,  _ I must _ .

Tilly continued, “Also, they’re mostly idiots.”

Yuna couldn’t help but laugh at that. God, how long it had been since she’d last laughed.

“They don’t seem to notice me much here,” Yuna admitted. It sounded vain, but she meant to be matter of fact. The only man who had shown any interest in her since she got to the mainland was Javier. 

Not that she had put in much effort, or wanted to be noticed. The most she did every morning was brush her hair, wash her face, and put on the same old dusty clothes. She couldn’t change how she looked, she would never be blonde and blue eyed and busty, but maybe if she smiled more, maybe if she wore something finer, it wouldn’t matter to these men that she was “an Oriental.”

“I doubt that,” Tilly turned on her side so she would face her, and Yuna did the same until they were facing each other, and whispered conspiratorially. “Can I see that thing Charles gave you?” 

Yuna had put it in the front pocket of her skirt after Charles had given it to her and hadn’t given it a second thought, or look. It was embarrassing somehow to take it out in front of him, and the look Miss Grimshaw had given her was enough to scare her off looking at it anytime the woman was around either. Later, all she could think about was her hunger.

She took it out now, and looked at it in the moonlight. It really was beautiful, intricately carved in a piece of wood he had shaped into a circle. If this was in her room in Valentine, it would be worth going back for.

Setting it down between them, Tilly reached out and traced the leaves with her fingers.

“It’s the prettiest thing in this camp,” Tilly whispered, “Don’t show it to anyone else.”

“Why?” Yuna asked, whispering now too, though she didn’t know why she was. It just felt good, to whisper with another girl her age. It felt  _ normal _ .

“It’s nice to have a secret around here, we don’t get to keep too many of those,” Tilly replied, “I won’t tell anyone, I promise. Miss Grimshaw won't neither, no one wants to talk to her.”

They giggled together, and fell asleep side by side with the sound of music in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to comment, or kudo! I'm happy to know people are enjoying this.


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's favorite uncle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've taken the stories of the heists that Mary Beth and Karen talk about here from biographies of real conwomen. There's also some dialogue from the game (as there is in previous chapters). I've toned down the Irish accent here to make it more readable.
> 
> Finally, I'm stretching out the timeline of the game here. I've seen a lot of different estimates of how long of a time period the game covers until the epilogue, ranging from around 6 months to a year. I imagine it as being more on the year/year and a half/maybe even two side of things, for the purpose of this story.

Yuna had worried about the unpredictability of life in the camp when she first joined, after three weeks she found herself practically _wishing_ for something to happen. That day she left to the river with Charles ended up being about as exciting as it got. Her days were filled with chores, a routine of laundry, mending, and helping Mr. Pearson with the kitchen, seemingly invariable.

Back home, there was a rhythm to her life too but there were moments of escape, of walking hand in hand with her friends to the beach, of telling stories in their bunk beds at night. Despite the friendliness of most of the women, save for Dutch’s Molly, there was some unbreachable gap between them. Their lives were marked with tragedy, she’d begun to get hints of that, and they had seen so much more of the world than she had. She began to miss women like her, women with small lives.

There were times with Tilly and Mary Beth where she almost had that feeling again, that intimacy, but it wouldn’t take long for them to say something which would scare her, remind her of where she was and who she was with.

One night, early on when the carving Charles’ had given her was still the most exciting thing that’d happened in the camp, Tilly had asked her whether she’d ever slept with a man.

“I think so,” Yuna admitted, whispered.

It was a warm night, and so many mosquitos were nipping at their skin on their bedrolls that her and Tilly had resorted to hiding under the covers, though they were sweating bullets underneath them.

Tilly laughed, “What does that mean? It’s not a trick question!”

“I mean, I think he put it in but I didn’t feel it, I couldn’t tell.”

He had been a friend of her brother’s, when she was 16, in an abandoned boat on the beach. They’d fooled around, taken each other’s clothes off, and she _thought_ he’d penetrated her, but wasn’t sure what it was meant to feel like. She’d run through the story with her friends after, but they never reached a consensus, and she hadn’t been with another man yet so had nothing to compare it to.

Tilly laughed harder at that too, and Yuna couldn’t help but join in, even if it was at her expense.

“If you haven’t, you really ought to,” Tilly advised. And then said the saddest thing, “Not many girls around here got to choose their first man.”

They didn’t speak about it again after that - Charles hadn’t spoken to her again, Javier left her alone except for a smile here and there - so without any material, there were no other men to discuss. She didn’t want to ask Tilly about her own past; the answer would doubtless frighten her.

She had to start bringing in income to the gang, she knew, but they were too close to Valentine and it was the only viable place for work within a few hours’ ride. When she admitted to Miss Grimshaw that she had spoken to most of the town, that the shopkeeper had her brother’s name and she was the only East Asian woman there, that door had been closed to her for good.

The men were busy working their own job, tracking down another member of their gang that they’d been separated from named Sean (“he’s damn annoying,” Karen said, “but you’ll like him”). Only Dutch, Uncle, Mr. Strauss, Mr. Pearson, John, and a strange man they called Reverend Swanson were ever around around during the day, and none of them were particularly good company. When the other men returned at night, she retreated to her bedroll, as she always did.

She did start learning more about the women, though, if only in stories of the heists they pulled off.

Karen was too showy, Charles was right. She told Yuna stories of when she first starting conning. “All you need is a fancy dress,” she said. For a while, her favorite way of making money was going to the finest hotel rooms in the early morning and stealing the valuables inside. If the guests sleeping inside woke, she simply pretended to be in the wrong room; she was dressed so fine and acted so confused that they had no trouble believing her. By then, she would have already slipped a money clip into her pocket or a watch in her cleavage.

That took confidence, a certain _style_ \- that was what Karen called it, style. Yuna didn’t think she had any of that.

Mary-Beth told her of a jewelry store she’d robbed. She’d hired an old man to play her father and a woman with a baby to play her governess and her child. Mary-Beth played the part of the lady so well, they’d let her try on their finest pieces. When it was time to pay up, she made a show of having forgotten the money at home and left to fetch it, jewelry still on, leaving “her family” as guarantees. She was on a train heading out of town before they realized she wasn’t coming back, and that her family members had been paid $5 each to accompany here to the store.

Mary-Beth was so sweet, so pretty, that it made for a romantic image, racing out into the night, decked out in precious jewels. “All those places have insurance,” she explained, “I don’t think they missed those pretty things very much.”

When Yuna had asked what insurance was, Mary-Beth explained that companies paid money to other companies each month in case they got robbed, or flooded out, or burned up. It meant they would get their money back, sometimes even more than what their merchandise was worth.

A victimless crime. No one got hurt, no one lost anything.

That took something too, though, a way with words that Yuna didn’t have, an ability to lie she had never had to learn.

She would never be brave enough to rob a sleeping man or a jewelry store, but she did learn some things. How to know if a man was wealthy or just pretending he was - “you can tell by his shoes, and what type of whiskey he drinks when he’s sober,” was Miss Grimshaw’s advice. How to create another identity - the trick was to anticipate any questions in advance, but not give too much information up front. How to stay safe - never be alone with a strange man, unless you were willing to use a knife on him if needed, never leave the place where you’d met him, whether it was a saloon or train station, and never work without a partner when you were just starting out.

Today, Yuna was in Mr. Pearson’s kitchen with Sadie Adler, washing the dishes from breakfast. Mrs. Adler didn’t sit much with the other women; if she did, she was quiet and withdrawn. She was new too, Yuna remembered, but guessed that the circumstances of Mrs. Adler's joining the gang were even sadder than hers.

It was a quiet, beautiful morning.

Hosea Matthews sat drinking his coffee nearby with a book in hand. Arthur sat with him, looking over a map, getting ready to head out. The man that’d been tied to the tree when she first arrived, Kieran was tending to some of the horses and they were speaking back to him in nickers and groans. Mary-Beth and Tilly were speaking somewhere across camp, but Yuna didn’t try to listen to what they were saying, just be still in the peace instead, despite how boring it was.

Uncle approached them as they worked.

“Miss Yuna, I been _thinking_ ,” He started.

Arthur Morgan lifted his head from the map, and interrupted, “Does it pay well?”

“Eventually,” Uncle replied.

“So, while the rest of us are busy stealin’, killin’, lyin’, fighting to try to survive, you get to think all day?” Arthur asked.

A smile played on Mr. Matthews’ lips.

“It’s a strange world we live in, Arthur Morgan,” Uncle was impenetrable; no amount of teasing seemed to ruffle him, “But I ain’t talkin’ to you, is I?” He turned to face Yuna fully. “Now, miss, I been _thinkin_ ’ on your situation. I think it’s time we put you to work.”

“What kind of work?” Arthur asked, from behind them.

“Mind your damn business, Arthur,” Uncle threw out over his shoulder. “This is a task for a pretty young thing, not an old man whose knife is so dull it wouldn’t cut hot butter.”

“Then why are _you_ going?” Arthur smirked.

Mrs. Adler chuckled at that.

Uncle mostly ignored it, mumbling something under his breath and decided to give it another shot. “It’s an easy job, miss. I got a lead from a man I was drinking with in Valentine.” Arthur seemed to want to say something in response to that, but Uncle continued quickly before he could. “There’s a settlement up near the Heartland Oil Fields, owned by a Mr. Cornwall. The workers and company men live inside the field but there’s merchants, saloons, a doctor’s shop, hotels all around it where the men go on Sundays. And _stagecoaches_. They bring in the wages for the workers. All you’s got to do is hang around there long enough and talk to enough people to know when how often the they come in, then we come back here and send some of the muscle to collect.”

“So all I have to do is talk to people?” Yuna asked.

Everyone was listening, even Mr. Pearson. _Be careful_.

“These men have been under the ground for so long digging for black gold, they know all the worms by their first names. Now, with a girl talking to them, letting ‘em buy her drinks, smiling a little, they’ll be ready to sell out their own mommas.”

 _Is it safe?_ She wanted to ask. _Can you keep me safe out there?_

 _I need to bring in money_. She was a week away from her 30 day mark when she promised herself she would decide what the next step to take was, and she was no more sure of what step to take than she had been that first night. Whatever it was, she would have to decide for herself; she couldn’t let herself be turned out of camp.

This was easy. All she had to do was smile and flirt a little; that’d never been a problem for her, before she came to the mainland.

“Should we leave now?” Yuna asked, drying her hands on the front of her dress.

Uncle let out a cheer, “That's the spirit. Feels good to have some positivity around here, for once.”

Arthur Morgan, folded up the map, put away in his back pocket and made to get up. “Uncle is a damn fool, but it ain’t bad as far as first jobs go, Miss Yuna. It’ll get your hands a little dirty, but not filthy.” _All I have to do is talk to some men_ , she reminded herself. “Now Uncle, you be back here by sunset.”

“Good luck, miss,” Mr. Matthews said, kindly. It put her a little at ease. “By the time you’re back, hopefully we’ll have young Sean here too. We can toast to your first job, and his safe return.”

Uncle made for one of the wagons. Yuna followed.

* * *

She might have been more nervous on the ride to the oil fields had it not been for Uncle’s endless chatter, stopping only to chew tobacco and to spit it out.

He helped her craft a story, at least. He’d named her Emma, said most of the men wouldn’t ask much more than that, but if they did, tell them she was looking for work cleaning. “Your dress ain’t fine enough and your hands ain’t smooth enough to pretend to be anything other than a maid,” he said. Uncle was a farmer she’d met on the road. It made little sense to her.

The boomtown reminded her a bit of home on a larger scale, though the landscape was marred by massive oil derricks and an unpleasant burning smell she didn’t recognize. It felt more like the towns in California than anywhere else she’d seen on the mainland; the people who walked the streets were white, black, East Asian, all working together, greeting each other.

She made herself pay attention to the details, like Miss Grimshaw’d instructed her to do. There were some women around, but not much. Some were finely dressed, though they seemed to live more on the outskirts; _maybe married to some of the company men_. The rest looked poor, mostly young, and a couple were obviously working girls, their faces painted. Most of the men on the street looked like drillers or shovellers; their faces were clean, but there were black stains on their overalls, and their boots were largely caked in black sludge. A man asking for charitable donations stood on the side of the road passing out pamphlets, which no one took; instead, they headed for the saloon.

Uncle parked their wagon around the back of the saloon and they both disembarked.

“This humble farmer is mighty thirsty,” he said, “Now, don’t go overthinkin’ it. Most of these men can’t hit the ground with their hats in three throws. And we’ve got the _whole_ day.”

He led the way, and she followed.

The last and only time Yuna had been in a saloon was in Valentine when she was asking about her brother. She’d gone in the morning on a Monday, when it was mostly quiet save for a few drunks half asleep in their cups and none had paid her any notice. This was a different beast entirely.

The saloon was packed. It made sense, this being the drillers’ day off and everything, but she didn’t expect it to be quiet like this. There were two or three families, men with their wives and children sitting near the windows, eating boiled potatoes and meatloaf. There was a line five people deep of men waiting for the barber, the rest either crowded around the bar trying to get the barkeep’s attention or playing card games. There was music coming from the top floor, where Yuna could see women were taking men into bedrooms.

Uncle headed for the bar to try to jostle his way into getting a drink, giving Yuna a look as though to say, _I’ll be over here_. They had agreed to separate once they got inside (Uncle said it was so the men wouldn’t think they were a couple, but she wondered who in their right mind would think that). With no open chairs and tables, she retreated to where the player piano sat, and stood leaning on the wall.

She forced herself to relax her face, careful not to appear to welcoming least they think she was a working girl, but not too serious either.

The men seemed to all know each other, seemed to be happy. It wasn’t unlike the gang campfire at the end of a long day, everyone looking to unwind, to have a good time. It wasn’t unlike Sundays on the plantation either.

And she was helping steal their wages. Though, if anything like that happened back home, the workers would just get their money a few days later. _This is just like Mary-Beth’s story_ , she decided, _no one is losing anything. Mr. Cornwall’s probably got insurance._

It took 20 minutes for someone to notice her. Uncle’d predicted it would take an hour.

Yuna saw him begin to see her. He was a young man, black-haired and blue-eyed, her age or maybe just a little older, sitting with four companions, sharing a bottle of whiskey. They were saying something to him, teasing him, though they were far away enough that she couldn’t hear it. With a grin, he made his way over to her, with all the swagger of a boy going across the room to ask a girl he’d been courting for a dance, performing for his friends.

“You look lahnely, miss,” He had a nice smile, and an accent she didn’t recognize. “Mind if i stand wit you a little?”

“I don’t mind,” She smiled back and looked over briefly at Uncle, who was sitting on a bar stool in front of a glass of beer. “I’m Emma.”

“I’m Michael.” He shook her hand; they were the hands of a worker, callused, scarred, fingernails broken. “Are you frahm around here?”

Yuna shook her head. She made room for him so he could put his back against the wall beside her.

“I’m only here looking for work in one of the big houses, but I haven’t been very lucky. What about you?”

 _Please don’t ask anymore questions_. She’d already forgotten the lie she was supposed to tell, and panicked trying to think of a new one.

“Ireland. I gat a pocketful of cash and I’d like to buy you a drenk, if you’d let me. What’ll it be, Miss Emma?”

_Could it really be that easy?_

“A beer, please.”

She’d never tried a beer before.

“One beer comin’ up. Stay right here, I'll be back in a jeffy.”

She watched as he wove through the crowded saloon, stopped one or twice to speak briefly with men he seemed to be friends with, who patted him on the back and threw a suggestive look her way.

It felt like someone’s else life, layers of different lives. One was a plantation girl, a nobody, who was looking for her brother so she could go back to her nothing life. One was a woman who lived with a gang of outlaws, teaching her how to cheat and lie so she could buy her place with them. And one was this Emma, who was looking for work, and waiting for a pretty boy to bring her a drink.

It was this last woman who she liked the most, who she wanted to be, at least for a little while longer. It was the only version of her that didn’t have anything to be sad about yet.

Michael made his way back to her, balancing a glass of beer in each hand. She took hers with quiet thank you, and gave it a try.

The first sip sent foam up her nose and left her coughing into her glass. Michael laughed, not unkindly.

“Naht much of a drenker, are you? You’ll have to learn, if you want to work around here.”

“I guess not,” Yuna laughed, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

A man had started to play a lively song on an accordion across the saloon, and a space cleared on the floor where couples had started to dance.

“You dahn’t have to drenk it if you dahn’t like it.” Yuna gratefully handed it over. He set it on top of the piano, and took a big gulp from his own. “It’s no trouble, you caught me on payday. And it gave me an excuse to talk to you.”

It was the first Sunday of the month, she had to remember that. It was now noon and he seemed to have been drinking for a while. That meant they likely had been paid early in the day.

“What type of work do you do?” Yuna risked it and asked, hoping he wouldn’t ask her many questions in return.

“I’m a degger. All of us here are. Shitty work, if you pardon me miss, but the pay isn’t bad at all. You’ll find work here, if you’re lookin fahr it,” He looked over his shoulder to where the man with the accordion had been joined with a woman from upstairs, who had started to sing, “Do you want to dance, miss?”

“I’d like that,” Yuna replied, and meant it.

As Michael lead her in one dance after another, his hands around her waist, Yuna tried to remember the last time someone had touched her. Not sexually - _well, that too_ \- but in this soft, innocent way. Being pulled on top of a horse was something else entirely, as was being pressed against a man in a saddle. There was a sweetness to this, something that filled her with a dim sense of hope. There were normal moments to be had, even in this new life; moments where she could feel like a 18 year old girl, who would see some sort of life for herself, one with future, with security, with a family.

She caught Uncle’s eye as he spoke to a woman at the bar, an obvious working girl, and it shifted her slightly back to reality as it stood now.

It took her another couple of hours to get the information she needed. She could have gotten it sooner, but she didn’t want to push him and make him suspicious, nor did she want to stop dancing.

The diggers were paid the first Sunday of the month as they left chapel in the early morning - a mandate from the company. The drillers were paid the week after, and the shovellers the week after that. The company men were the only ones paid twice a month, on the second and fourth Sundays. Michael punctuated his answers with insults of the other groups of workers; diggers are the hardest working, he boasted, the strongest and the worst paid.

She learned about him too. He had sailed from a place named Derry, just two years ago. He had no family left back home, had come to New York first but couldn’t find work and started traveling west. Yuna told him she’d come from California, and it didn’t feel quite like a lie. She told him she had a big family, brothers and sisters who needed her to support the family. That felt less true, but swallowable.

“Why is your Englesh so pretty, if you dahn’t mend me askin?” Michael asked. Her feet had started to hurt from the dance - _I’m out of practice_ , she thought - and they stood at the bar. He’d bought her a whiskey, which she liked much more. “I beg your pardon, you dahn’t talk like many maids I’ve met.”

“My father taught me,” She lied. Her father spoke one or two words of English. She’d, like the rest of the children on the plantation, had to go to school with the missionaries on the island until she was old enough to work. She decided to deflect. “Have you ever had sake before?”

“No, what’s that?”

“It’s a Japanese drink. We make it from rice.”

A memory came unbidden to Yuna, of Hiroki, a boy she’d grown up, of their first kiss, of how their lips had tasted of sake. They were walking back from school, had taken the long way back home, and he tested the waters with small touches throughout the day; brushing his fingers against hers when she gave him something, walking so close beside her that their hands touched, pretended there was something in her hair just so he could touch it. Michael had begun to do the same, and Yuna didn’t mind it; he didn’t frighten her like the men in the camp. She knew what type of man he was, had grown up with men like him. He wasn’t a killer.

“Is it stronger then this?” He asked, lifting up his glass of whiskey.

“It is.”

“Den let’s get you another one.”

They had three glasses each by the time the sun set and danced to four more songs when he asked her to go for a walk with him. She knew it was coming, the way women know when a man is gearing up to ask them for something, the air thick with anticipation and tension, their eyes filled with longing. And she knew she wanted to.

It made her remember Uncle though, and she told Michael she had to speak to the farmer she’d come with first, and see whether he might wait for her.

She found him in the back of the saloon, his arms around a working girl, a redhead with nest of curly hair and smeared lipstick from where she’d been kissed. They were laughing, and Uncle had buried his face into bosom. _Now that’s a sight I’d rather forget._

The woman noticed her first, nudged Uncle gently and disentangled herself from his embrace.

“This is a poor orphan girl I been helpin’, darlin’, now don’t get jealous,” He said to the woman, his voice slurring. It was funny to imagine someone being jealous over Uncle; the smirk on the woman’s first told Yuna she was thinking the same thing. “We got some business to take care of but don’t you get too far, you hear?”

The woman dutifully walked away. _She probably wants to kiss my feet in gratitude_.

“What you want?” Uncle snapped, “Don’t you see I had a good thing going?”

Yuna ignored him, “When are we going? Arthur said to be back by sunset but it’s past that now.”

“Arthur Morgan ain’t my daddy,” Uncle replied, aggravated. “We leave when I want.”

“And when’s that?”

“Well, I’d wanted to go after I finish doin’ that woman over there, the one _you_ chased off.”

Yuna was happy, and felt like herself tonight. She smiled slyly. “So, five minutes?”

“I bring you all the way out here, take you away from that stinkin’ camp and that witch Grimshaw and that’s what you got to say to me? I’m hurt, miss, I really am,” He feigned innocence unconvincingly.

It was starting to make sense why he brought here. She was likely the only one of the women who would have said yes to an expedition that including spending the whole day with him, and given him an excuse to get out of camp to go whoring and drinking.

Uncle continued, looking at her carefully, “Why you askin’? It got anything to do with that Irish feller?”

“He wants to go for a walk.” There was no point lying to him; it was safer if he knew, though Yuna doubted whether he was sober enough to do anything about it if she needed his help.

“A walk?” Uncle snorted, “Is that what they’re callin’ it these days?”

“It’s not like that.” It wasn’t, it was just a walk. _Not everyone’s like you_ , she wanted to add, but she also wanted him to let her go. She was thinking of what Tilly had told, about getting to pick her first man. Michael seemed as good of a choice as any.

Uncle looked longingly at the woman he’d been necking with before; she was talking to some other man at the poker table, and they were heading for the stairs.

“I suppose it’s gettin’ late and we got a long ride ahead of us,” Uncle made to stand up, nearly fell and steadied himself on a table, “And not ‘cause Arthur said. ‘Cause _I_ say.”

Yuna looked over her shoulder to where the oil well digger stood behind at the bar, looking at her. He smiled when their eyes met, but the smile waned as she made her way over to him and he began to realize what she would say.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” Yuna said.

She wanted to cry, though she hadn't cried since she left home, and didn’t know if it was the whiskey or the death of the possibility of another type of night, something other than going to sleep alone on a bedroll in the hard ground, lonely and alone. Perhaps it was that she didn’t know when was the last time she would talk to someone so freely again. Though half of what she said to him was a lie, she had begun to feel like herself, had danced and joked and drank and not worried about what someone across the campfire was thinking of her.

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” She said again, feeling sorry for this boy whose wages would likely be stolen soon, “It was really nice to meet you, Michael.”

“You too, miss. I hope to meet you again one day. Maybe you’ll fend work here after all.”

That made her feel even sadder.

He put his hand out in front of him and she shook it as a goodbye. They both held on, and she’d had to be the one to pull away.

Yuna tried not to look behind her as she went back to Uncle. He’d gotten another bottle of whiskey in the meantime, and was heading for the back door and to their wagon on shaky feet.

“Are you sure you can drive like this?” She asked.

“Damn right I can drive. What kind of question is that?” He snapped back.

* * *

Uncle couldn’t drive.

It wasn’t so bad at first. The horses moved slow, Uncle was singing, and it was dark enough that Yuna couldn’t tell how lost they were for a while. She was lost in her own thoughts too; thinking on what had happened in the saloon, wondering what would have happened if she went on that walk, the good and the bad, and feeling silly for wondering. This wasn’t the time for romance, or moonlight kisses, or whatever other foolishness she’d dreamed of as she danced with that boy. To survive, she had to be singularly focused, on figuring out how to leave this damn gang, how to get to another town where she could resume the search for Kenji - or sell a couple of those gold coins, get back to California, and on a ship home.

She’d never been singularly focused though, it wasn’t her way. Perhaps that’s why she hadn’t minded working in the fields; it was mindless work, and she could chat with the people around her, get lost in her own thoughts and daydreams, and the minute the whistle at the end of the day blew, could go off with her friends or with Kenji, do whatever she wanted. To think of survival as a strategy was so alien to her, having to harden her heart was so unnatural that it pained her to work at it.

Perhaps if she _had_ been more focused on the road, they wouldn’t have gotten into the trouble they found themselves in.

Uncle got drunker and drunker as their journey progressed, and sleepier the more he drank. He’d nearly run over a couple of people as they left the town, then insisted on taking a shortcut he knew off the main road so they’d get back faster. When Yuna objected, he said he didn’t want to miss Sean’s party.

They ended up in a heavily forested area, navigating the wagon passed giant trees, the air so thick and quiet it felt as though they were the last two people on Earth. Their lanterns were the only source of light, other than the moon, and fireflies gathered around them. It didn’t seem right, but she didn’t know the land out here and said nothing.

Uncle must have dozed off, likely only for half a second, or else she’d have noticed, but he woke up with a start and pulled at the reins of the horses hard enough that he scared them, let the reins go slack in response and they heaved forward suddenly. Yuna didn’t even manage a scream before half of the wagon slammed against the side of a tree and one of the right wheels fell off with a cracking bang. She tumbled against Uncle, who _had_ screamed.

The horses, at least, were now still, as though to say, “we bet you’re awake now, aren’t you?”

“Goddamnit!” Uncle cursed as he disembarked.

Yuna followed, jumped awkwardly off the tilted wagon. They stood together over the fallen wheel.

Suddenly, it became very easy to focus on survival.

Uncle didn’t seem to be as worried.

“Well.” He took off his hat and scratched his head, as though it might help him think. “There ain’t nothing you can do about that now. Better to get some shut eye, and think about it in the morning with a clear head.”

“You mean we’re going to sleep out here?”

“A night under the stars, sleepin’ with your back in the grass will do you some good, if you want to get used to this life. This is how _real_ outlaws sleep, nothing between them and the wild but a loaded pistol.” Uncle gave the horses each a pat, and settled on the ground, his back against the tree.

“Should we put the lanterns out? Do you even have a pistol?” Yuna asked. Suddenly, the empty forest didn’t seem to bare. Whatever paralysis she had felt that first day with Arthur outside the camp now seemed so very far away; instead, there was pure panic growing in her gut, trying to get out, infect every part of her until she couldn’t breathe.

“Put them out.” She obeyed, and when she turned he was trying to give her the pistol, holding the barrel and pointing the handle at her. “Here.”

“Here? What do you mean, here?”

“Here, woman! You take first watch. My lumbago is flaring up and I needs some rest.”

“I’ve never shot a gun before!”

Something in her made her reach out and take it, though she cursed herself as she did. The gun felt cold and heavy in her hands; it reminded her of the feel of it on her body, that day Javier held it against her in the jail. She shivered.

“If you see somethin’ or hear somethin’, pull the latch on the back, point and shoot.”

An indecipherable sound came out of her mouth as she tried to object, to say something, undo this entire situation but found nothing.

 _It’ll be alright,_ she repeated to herself, _it’s just some trees, it’s just a few hours, it’ll be alright_.

The first hour of her watch was punctuated with moments of pure terror anytime she heard, or thought she heard, a sound, or glimpsed a movement. She held the gun in her hands, pointed it wildly around, and finding nothing would focus more keenly, build up the panic so much that she felt she might explode. All the while, Uncle snored under the tree. By the third hour, she relaxed more, though perhaps that was the fatigue setting in. She held the gun, as though she knew what to do with it, but sat down beside uncle, and watched the trees.

As the night wore on, even the cold couldn’t keep her awake.

She dozed off every few minutes, only to wake with a start and doze off again, her head falling and rising on her chest, a cycle of exhaustion. It got warmer, and the conscious part of herself knew it was almost daytime, but the other part just wanted to sleep and so she did, curled up near Uncle, her back to him.

Yuna dreamt of wolves stalking them through the trees, dreamt of water that washed away the forest and drowned them, dreamt of guns shooting and bodies falling. She dreamt of boys who tasted of sake, and men who smelled of fire.

Something woke her in the morning, something _real_.

Yuna’s eyes flew open. Uncle was still laid out next to her, fast asleep. Somewhere beyond the trees, she heard a horse grunting and a man’s low voice speaking to it.

She kicked Uncle with her boot, hoping to rouse him. The old man groaned, and shifted his body away from her. There was the sound of crunching leaves, as though underfoot, but did she just imagine it?

_Pull the latch, point and shoot._

With shaking hands, she pulled the latch and pointed it at the direction of the sound. She forced herself to take a breath, try to calm herself. Instead, on her exhale, she pressed the trigger.

Everything seemed to happen all at once after that.

The sound deafened her for a moment, filled her ears with a screeching instead. She could see Uncle jump up, but couldn’t hear what he was saying, what he was shouting as he tried to grab the gun from her; she gave it over willingly. The wagon shifted as the horses tried to get away, realized they couldn’t without the wheel, and moved desperately against their restraints instead.

A man emerged from the trees.

It was Charles.

Suddenly, she could hear again.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Uncle?” Charles was the angriest she’d ever seen him.

“Me? What the hell is wrong with _me_?” Uncle shouted, holstering his gun, “It’s this damn woman! She was meant to be keeping watch, not taking shots like a goddamn Billy Midnight. All I’s tryin’ to do is get some shuteye after a hard day’s work.”

“A hard day’s work? You?” Charles asked, raising an eyebrow.

He approached the wagon, tried to calm the rattled horses. _I need someone to calm me down_. At least her hands weren’t shaking anymore.

“It’s easy to pick on the elderly, Charles,” Uncle replied, “It’s easy, but it ain’t dignified. Now what are you going to do about this?” He pointed to the wheel.

Charles ignored him, and looked at Yuna instead. “How did you get all the way out here?”

“Where are we?” She asked, dumbly.

She suddenly felt that she had to sit down, and did, in the spot she was resting before. With some soothing words to the horses, Charles left them, and came to stand by her. It reminded her of that first evening with Arthur Morgan. God, she was sick of being at the mercy of these men.

“You’re in Cumberland Forest, north of the oil fields. Dutch sent me to look for you,” He explained, searching for something in her face.

 _The job_ . Yuna remembered suddenly. She tried to think of what the man in the saloon had told her but it took such an effort to think and she was _so_ tired.

Charles turned to Uncle, “Come on then, grab the wheel.”

Uncle looked like he was about to grumble about something, but something in Charles’ tone made him rethink it. He did as instructed, for once; as Charles planted his feet in the ground and lifted the wagon, Uncle rolled it over and pushed it until was back in place.

“Is Sean back?” Uncle asked, as he climbed back into the wagon. _No “thank you.” Typical._

“Yes. They had a party for him last night,” Charles replied. He whistled and two horses approached from the thick of trees. One was his, Taima, the other a smaller, brown horse. Yuna felt a flood of relief that she hadn’t hit any of them.

“Damn, I missed the party? I’ve always been lucky in my bad luck.” He looked at Yuna, “Well, come on then, let’s get home. Maybe they saved some of the fun for us.”

Yuna ignored him and looked at Charles instead, “I’m not getting in that wagon with him ever again.”

“I tell you girl, you really do hurt me. I thought we was friends after last night!” He was smirking, and she wanted to punch him.

“You’re in Cumberland Forest. Go south for five miles and you’ll hit the road coming out of the oil fields. Follow it west and it’ll bring you past Valentine and then south to camp. You got that?” Charles directed.

“I ain’t an idiot. I’ll see you back at camp.”

It took him a moment to get his bearings and head out, winding through the trees and away from her, leaving her, Charles and Taima alone in the forest. It felt good to see the back of him, but she didn’t think she could trust herself to stand up. She forced herself.

“I’m sorry, miss,” Charles was looking at her with that searching look again.

“For what?” _I should be apologizing, for shooting at you_. But she felt embarrassed to admit it, and didn’t want to remember how that gun felt in her hands, the sound of the shot.

“I told you you wouldn’t have to use a gun.”

That day by the river. She remembered now. He was being kind again.

“Why do you have two horses?” She asked instead, “Is someone else here?”

“I was going to go hunting after I found you and I didn’t want to weigh Taima down in the snow,” He explained. As though remembering the horses were there, he turned to give them each a sugar cube from his pocket.

He had come to find them, send her on her way with Uncle, and go North, then.

There was such a quiet way about him that was a welcome change from Uncle’s endless talking and teasing and spinning stories. He didn’t seem to mind silence, and it gave Yuna a change to think of what she wanted to say, think of what she wanted to do.

She didn’t want to hunt, didn’t know _how_ to, but she didn’t want to go to camp, didn’t want to see Uncle again, didn’t want to meet this returned member of the gang or tell Dutch the information she’d learned about the stagecoaches. She was tired, and though the sense of normalcy she’d had last night as she danced with the boy in the saloon was dissipating, started to the moment they rode out of town and was almost finished by the time she fired that gun, she wanted to hold onto it a little while longer.

There was no where that was safe for her; camp didn't feel safe, the wild certainly wasn't, going on that walk last night with that sweet boy probably wasn't either. She had been alone with Charles before though and he was kind, in fact he seemed to be making a habit out of it. Maybe it's wasn't safe either, but it was better than anywhere else now.

“Can I come with you? I won’t bother you, or slow you down. It just... Well, it would be nice not to go back yet.”

 _And I've never seen snow before_.

Charles didn’t answer for a beat, turned from where he was tending to the horses and looked at her. It felt like an eternity, though it was likely only a few seconds. He seemed to want to say no, she could tell by the guilty look in his eyes.

“I’ll need to go into town to get you new clothes and see about renting a cabin,” He said carefully. She was secretly relieved she wouldn’t have to sleep outside. “And send word to Dutch you’ll be going with me.”

“Is that a yes?” She asked, still unsure.

“Yes, sure,” though he seemed unsure too.

Yuna could have kissed him right there, if they were different people. Instead, she smiled.

“Do you want to try to ride Kenda?” He asked. That must be the name of the brown horse.

 _How hard could it be riding a horse?_ Given how hard everything else had been though, she was wary. And she was tired, so tired.

“Another time, maybe?” She ventured.

“Alright. Let’s ride.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone who's taken the time to comment/kudo. I've been having a lot of fun writing this, and knowing other people are enjoying it too has been lovely and inspiring.


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trust?

It was a long, hard ride to Ambarino.

Their only stop was a small town at the foothills of the mountains, with one general store, a supply store for hunting goods, a saloon with only two tables inside and a butcher by the side of the road who bought furs and meats. They were set out on a single street; going north led you to the snow capped mountains, going south meant going back to New Hanover. Yuna was sure she was the only woman in that town; the few men that were there were looked filthy, and the town stunk of the smell of tanning hides. 

They ate lunch quickly at the saloon and headed for the general store.

She followed Charles lead; he bought some jugs of water and canned foods, and let her look at the catalogue for warmer clothes while he got himself changed. They only had clothes for men, but Yuna picked the cheapest and smallest things she could find; a pair of long underwear, some pants which she had to keep up with a belt, a black sweater and a black coat. She was sure she looked ridiculous. If she was still with Uncle, she had no doubt he would have had something to say about it, but Charles said nothing, spoke to the shopkeeper about renting a cabin, and settled their account.

The ride was made worse by the bulky, heavy clothes she was now wearing. The long underwear felt suffocating, the sweater she bought was scratchy, and the further up the mountains they went, the rougher the road. She was able to catch a few moments of sleep, resting against Charles’ back, but she was too anxious about falling off Taima and forced herself to stay awake, focus in on the landscape.

It was beautiful, although freezing cold. There was something mesmerizing about looking down and watching Taima’s footsteps make indents on the fresh snow, about breathing through her mouth to watch her breaths. It seemed as though Charles had been here before, finding paths that were impossible to see, hidden somewhere deep underground.

They arrived at the cabin after nightfall and Yuna helped Charles to unpack the horses, relishing in the crunch of walking on snow, and brought their things inside. There were two rooms; one was a sitting area with a couch, a table with some chairs, a wood burning stove and a kerosene heater, the other a room with one large bed and a bookshelf with a couple of dusty books.

Yuna was relieved when he put his things down on the couch. It was the first time since Valentine that she would get to sleep in a bed, _a real bed_ , not on a bedroll surrounded by other women, not out in the open, not getting bit up by bugs. The thought made her so happy that she didn’t even feel guilty that Charles had been relegated to the couch without discussion or compromise.

He didn’t so much as look over at the bedroom though; instead, he began to build the fire in the stove. Yuna set out the canned food they’d brought along on the table.

“How did the job go?” Charles asked. It was the first thing he’d said to her since they left the shop in town.

“It was fun.” He looked at her strangely at the choice of words. “Well, it was easy anyway. I spoke with one of the workers, he wanted to go for a walk, and we danced and he told me about the coaches. They get paid on Sundays, inside the oil field.”

Yuna didn’t know why she told him about the dance, the walk; maybe she was worried that Uncle would tell a different version of the story once they got to camp, or that he would tell the real story in a way that made it sound different than how it was. _It doesn’t matter what he thinks of me, or any of the rest of them_. But still, it felt somehow important to her to say it before Uncle did.

“I’m glad. A few more jobs like that and it might be enough for you to get back on your feet.”

He filled the coffee percolator with water which they’d brought with them from town, and added coffee to the basket, and boiled it over the stove. He wordlessly offered her a cup, but she shook her head and he poured it for himself instead.

The day by the river, it hadn’t bothered Yuna how quiet he’d been. Maybe it was because she was still thinking about everything that had happened, trying to understand how she ended up in that camp, or because was doing the laundry, had _something to do_. But now, she felt awkward standing around in silence, not knowing where to sit, what to do, what was expected of her.

She tried to think of something to say, anything.

“I’m sorry if I spoiled your trip,” She offered.

Charles shrugged, “Sometimes it’s good to get away from camp.”

Yuna didn’t know whether he was talking about her or himself, but she wasn’t about to ask. Instead, she went into the bedroom. She didn’t have anything to put away, or to organize; with regret, she remembered the journal she’d carried with her from Hawaii, which she’d lost sometime in Valentine when she was making her rounds to the ranches to ask about her brother. She barely wrote in it - she wasn’t much of an artist, and she didn’t have the patience or desire to reflect on her day - but she had seen Arthur Morgan with his, and wonder whether it helped, to put things down, put them in perspective. It might be nice to have something of her own too, other than her clothes (which Miss Grimshaw seemed to have put in the community pile), and the carving Charles had given her.

Charles moved around the cabin for a while, cleaning his guns, chopping and mixing herbs, rubbing something on his arrows. Exhausted, ashamed to sleep while he was hard at work but knowing she had no knowledge to help him with, Yuna settled for picking up a book off the shelf. It wasn’t much better than sleeping in terms of Charles thinking she was lazy and useless, but at least she would be conscious.

It was a penny dreadful about highwaymen. It was the last thing she wanted to read, considering she felt like she was living _in_ a penny dreadful, but it was better than nothing.

It was a few more hours still before Charles spoke to her again. He stood just outside her door, as though he didn’t want to even put one toe inside.

“Have you ever been hunting before?” He asked.

“No,” Yuna shook her head. “I’m starting to realize I don’t have very many useful skills.”

She was suddenly self conscious of being on the bed, and stood up to meet him at the door.

“You do a good job on the chores, Miss Grimshaw doesn’t bother you like she does the other girls. It sounds like you can talk to talk to strangers and charm them from how well the job went,” Charles countered. “And it seems like you were doing fine on your own before you met us. Were you travelling rough?”

Yuna shrugged, “I had some money so I rode the coaches. I slept outside mostly but I don’t know, I suppose I wasn’t scared then.”

Maybe she was more hopeful then, and maybe that’s what kept the fear away.

“I hope we didn’t give you something to be scared of,” He said, and seemed to mean it.

They did, though. Maybe not Charles, not yet, not really even though they were in a cabin alone in the middle of nowhere, but Javier scared her that day in the jail when they’d stolen her. He'd been polite and kept his distance since then, but she still remembered; though she'd also come to suspect that Arthur's story about Javier taking her some sort of flirtation was just a lie meant to make her feel better, meant to hide the actual danger she was in if they'd thought she would give their names to the sheriff. Dutch scared her too, with his big voice and how everyone seemed to respect him and how he seemed to know everything. Some of the others did as well, Bill Richardson did with his scowl, Reverend Swanson with his erratic behavior, Miss Grimshaw did when she hit one of the girls. The women weren’t frightening, but their stories were.

No one seemed to aware that they were though, or at least didn’t seem to go out of their way to do it or to take pleasure in it.

“I’m going to leave early in the morning. There’s good game out here. No one else should be out here except some hunters, but you should bar the door when I leave. When I come back, you can help me look for herbs. There’s a lake nearby too for some fishing but we have to see how much we can carry back to camp,” Charles explained. Herbs she could do, fishing too. “For now, I think I’ll get some sleep.”

“Sure.”

It felt rude somehow to close the door on him; it felt the same as shouting out, “I don’t trust you.” Sleeping with the door open was stranger still. She knew if she didn’t she wouldn’t get much sleep, which was foolish; she’d slept with Uncle alone in the woods, she slept in a camp with nothing that separated her from the men except for the folds of their tents. It was different with Charles though. He was younger, not as young as her, but maybe 30, 31; and they were entirely alone.

She supposed it had been foolish to be alone with Uncle. Just because he was old and played the clown didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. And as kind as Charles was to her, they’d only spoken once or twice before. He was quiet, sure, and seemed thoughtful, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous too.

He’d begun to turn off the lanterns in the sitting area so Yuna closed her bedroom door before the cabin went dark. She changed out of her clothes so she wore only that ridiculous long underwear with the front flap for men. It was quiet in the cabin now, but only then did she notice that there was a key in the back of the bedroom door, that she could lock herself in.

Yuna hesitated.

Locked in, she would sleep easier. But Charles had said he’d go hunting early in the morning and she should bar the door to the cabin; what if he came to wake her, and realized she had locked him out? The prospect filled her with again with a keen sense of embarrassment. It felt like admitting a fear to him, a fear of him, which depending on the kind of man he was, would either hurt him or motivate him to further terrorize her. It felt like giving up some power.

She decided to leave it unlocked.

Turning off the lantern in the bedroom until the only light came from the little heater burning red, Yuna tried to sleep.

* * *

It was around three in the morning when he woke her up, softly shaking her shoulder. She resisted, stubbornly kept her eyes closed, tried to bury her head in the pillow for a few more hours of sleep, fatigue from the day before tempting to pull her under.

“Just bar the door and you can get back to sleep, miss,” He said, softly.

She forced herself up, saw him off through with a rifle on one shoulder and a bow on the other with heavy eyelids. She’d slept a deep sleep, one she had hoped to continue, but now that she was aware that she was alone, Yuna felt wide awake,

It was the most privacy she’d had since she’d started living in the camp. An entire cabin to herself, a bar on the door separating her from the outside world. Perhaps she should have been frightened, but instead she tried to think of what to do with these precious hours before he returned.

 _I could cry._ The thought came unbidden to her. She hadn’t wept since she’d arrived in the mainland, not even those days in Valentine when she was entirely alone, almost without hope. The desire for it, the need, the release it might give her, just sat on her chest; some days it felt lighter, some days heavy. A part of her worried that once she started, she might never stop.

She pushed it away. She would have much more to cry about before she found Kenji, she predicted, she would save it all for them.

If there was a tub, she might have given herself a bath. There were only some of the jugs of water they’d brought with them and the dingy sink by the stove. She heated up water in the percolator, a small bit at a time, undressed in the middle of the cabin, and slowly, using as little water as possible, washed her face, around her neck, her armpits and between her legs.

She felt better when she got dressed, lighter somehow, even in that awful, scratchy sweater.

Food was next. She cooked herself a sad meal of canned baked beans, and imagined instead the meat that Charles might bring back.

Out of things to preoccupy herself, Yuna began to eye Charles’s satchel. It sat on the couch in the space where he’d slept. Perhaps it was because she was tired and unable to sleep, or maybe it was because she was starting to get bored and couldn’t think of how to occupy herself until his return (the book was a last resort), but the more she ignored it, the more it felt like she couldn’t resist seeing what was inside.

It was childish and immature and disrespectful, all kinds of terrible things, but it felt mischievous too, felt like kind of safe trouble that she used to get into with Kenji back home. It wasn’t entirely safe, he was a strange man, one who might not take too kindly to her touching her things, but there was also a barred door and drawn curtains which separated them.

She caved. Careful to commit to memory exactly how the satchel looked, exactly how everything _inside_ it looked, she began to search.

It was fairly disappointing. Everything there was what she might expect a man to carry when he travelled - cigarettes, some bottles of medicine, a folded up map, a double edged razor, shaving soap, a small mirror, an empty notepad and a stub of a pencil. The only thing even slightly interesting was a hairbrush. It was immaculate, like the rest of his things, not a single hair caught in the bristles.

She avoided the mirror; she hadn’t looked at one since she left Valentine, and she wasn’t about to now, not at 4 in the morning.

It was probably an awful thing to do to him, considering how clean he kept his things, but she used his brush. She had always loved her hair, let it grow as long as she could without it getting in the way of her work. Men had loved it too; the more daring ones would wrap it around their hands when they kissed. No one in the mainland kept it as long as she did though; those that did, like Abigail and Miss Grimshaw, kept it wrapped up, away from their faces and their tasks.

She hadn’t cut it, maybe as some sort of last act of resistance, some holding onto her past. It seemed silly now, felt like it made her look like a fool to everyone, like she was someone who they would always see as inadequate, as naive, and useless.

Her mind made up, Yuna let herself enjoy the feel of the brush in her long hair for a while longer. When she was done, she carefully removed her hairs from Charles’ brush, returned everything to its place, and went into her room to get the knife from her boots.

She held her hair in her hands and in a few ragged motions, cut it so it now just touched the top of her shoulders.

It was only then that she felt like could sleep. She threw the hair in the stove, let it burn, and went back to bed.

She slept a dreamless sleep until Charles knocked on the door and called out to her from outside the cabin in the afternoon. He’d caught two elks, butchered them in the snow outside, and saved most of the meat in the icebox attached to the cabin to bring back to camp. He locked it; packed in ice and salted, explained it wouldn’t bring in predators that way. As he brought the hides inside the cabin and laid them out to dry on a rack, Yuna took the chance to use the outhouse.

“I’ve barely just gotten bed and you’ve already brought in enough meat to last days,” She admitted gingerly. He cooked a piece of it for them, which they shared across the table.

He hadn’t said anything about her hair.

Charles chuckled. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh, she thought.

“That’s alright, I’ll put you to work this afternoon,” He said, “There’s Alaskan ginseng growing around here, we can use it for tonics. There’s wintergreen berries and dragon’s mouth orchids too around the lake. We can go on foot but it might be a good day to get on Kenda.”

The horse, she remembered, the brown one that seemed plain and ugly next to Taima.

Charles cleared their plates, and motioned for her to follow him outside. Putting on their coats, they left the cabin, locking the door, and approached the horses where they stood side by side, tied to a hitching post. He seemed to be in a good mood after his hunt, though he was unsmiling there was a lightness about him too, and he watched as she cautiously put a hand on Kenda.

“She’s used to taking on different riders, it’s alright,” Charles said.

She remembered what he had taught her that day they went down to the river. The stirrups had already been adjusted for her height, and she took the reins in hand. Facing forward, she put her left foot in the stirrup, pushed off on her right leg and swung over the side of the horse. It was much less awkward with pants on instead of a skirt. She was used to balancing on the back on the back of the saddle, having always ridden behind men, but she brought herself up to the middle.

How naive she’d been when she thought she might buy a horse, before she’d run into the gang. Who would have taught her how to ride it?

Charles took hold of a rope tied to the horse’s halter.

“I’ll lead her for now, until you’re used to her.”

They moved carefully, Charles trudging through the snow alongside her, uncomplainingly, the horse calm underneath her. It was beautiful place; the sky was a bright clear blue too, uninterrupted by clouds, ground was crisp and white. It looked like an artists had draw a line of blue at the top of the canvas and a line of white at the bottom.

“It’s almost spring, we’ll be able to see the plants growing out of the snow,” Charles explained.

She wondered how he knew all this, who had taught him. She wondered how old he was and how long he’d been on his own. But she didn’t ask, made herself be quiet until he said something.

“Do you know where you’ll go next?” He clarified, “After you leave the gang.”

“I don’t know.” He might have left it at that, if he was the only being questioned, but Yuna found it hard to hold back as much as he did. “I thought my brother would be working in Valentine, but now I don’t think he’s been there in months. I suppose I’ll keep going east. But I don’t know”

She didn’t want to talk about it, it left her mind in a muddle.

“What about you?” She deflected, “Have you been with the gang for a while? Will you stay with them?”

Charles shrugged, “I was on my own for a while but I’ve been with Dutch and the boys for about six months now.”

It was his turn to deflect, then. He hadn’t answered her last question. Yuna let it go.

It was only about ten minutes before he saw the first plant, holding the horse carefully as Yuna dismounted. It was pretty and purple, poking out of the white snow. It felt like a shame to take it.

Charles crouched down beside it.

“We don’t need the root, just the leaves and the flower. Find the healthy ones, no brown spots or insect bites.” He turned them over carefully in his hands to show her, “And pinch it off before you cut it. Never pull, it’ll kill the plant.” With a knife from his belt, he carefully cut it. “We’ll grind it later.”

She wondered who’d taught him all this.

He let her cut the rest of the plants they found that afternoon, watching over her. He let go of Kenda’s horse too, explained to her how to squeeze the horse’s side with her legs to signal her to walk, to follow her movements with her arms, to steer.  They headed towards the lake.

“It’ll be some time before you learn to spot the poisonous plants. Some fools like Arthur Morgan try to tell the difference by tasting them, but it’s better to be patient and try to learn,” He said as he led her on, with a small smile.

There seemed to be an affinity between the two men.

“He’s not what I expected,” Yuna started, her voice trailing off.

“You mean, from an outlaw?” Charles asked.

“Yeah, I guess. He was drawing in a journal when I first met him. He waited for me while I thought of what to do and he told me I could leave if I wanted,” She remembered.

“You can,” Charles affirmed, “Dutch isn’t what you might you expect either. He’s different. He treats me fair.” Perhaps Yuna didn’t look convinced, because, uncharacteristically, he clarified, “For a feller with a black father and an Indian mother, that ain’t normally the case. I guess you’ve seen that for yourself in the time you’ve been in this country.”

“I’ve been ignored a lot.” There hadn’t been any nasty incidents because of her race, at least not yet, and no one in the camp seemed to care much or as too many questions. “I think most strangers assume I don’t speak English and are disappointed when I do. And the people I’ve met who speak Japanese are disappointed when I can’t speak it back to them.”

The memory of the day in Valentine came back to her.

“I saw Arthur Morgan fight a man in Valentine,” She continued. There was good and bad in all of them, she _had_ to remember. “I didn’t see the end of it.”

“Arthur won. The other man lived,” He flicked his eyes up to hers, “I remember you there. Javier called out to you and you kept walking.”

She remembered that too. She’d thought they were handsome, Javier and Charles, and her thoughts hadn’t extended much beyond that save for wanting to get away from the fighting before it got worse. 

They picked some of the berries that grew by the side of the lake - it was frozen over, so they cancelled the idea of fishing - and instead continued to move slowly through the snow, towards the cabin. Somewhere along the trail, as they rounded a corner between snow covered hills, Charles abruptly stopped, reached out and took the reins from her hands to still the horse.

“What’s wrong?” Yuna asked.

He lifted up a finger to his mouth, to tell her to be quiet.

Slowly, carefully, he crept forward, looking at something in the snow which she couldn’t see. Turning to hold up a hand as though to tell her to wait, he went around the corner and out of sight. _Maybe there’s an animal nearby, a bear or a wolf_. She strained her ears, trying to pick up anything at all, but heard nothing.

It was only a few moments before Charles returned. He was frowning, holding a small gun in his hand down his side.

“There are two men down the path. They look like they’ve been riding hard,” He explained, his voice low. “We have no choice but to ride past them. Keep your head down and wrap your scarf around your face, they might think you're a boy.”

Charles took the reins again, and she realized he was trying to get on the horse. Yuna slid off and let him, before climbing on again. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face in the back of his coat. Idly, she wondered whether she should be offended at his comment about looking like a boy. They moved faster now, with Charles in control of Kenda, hiding the gun in the folds of his clothes. She was closing her eyes tightly, and forced herself to open them, to be brave.

The men were sitting huddled around a low fire with their horses, their scarves pulled high around their faces. Charles didn’t slow down as they passed them and the men said nothing at all.

If it weren’t for the tension in Charles’ body she might have thought that the danger had passed. When they reached their cabin and dismounted, he removed the plants from Kenda’s saddlebags. To her surprise, he unhitched Taima and slapped both horses on their backsides, sending them running off into the snow.

“Why’d you do that?” She asked, following him as he walked into the cabin.

“They’ll come back when I call for them. I don’t want them to get stolen in the night, or worse. Come on,” He guided her inside and closed the door. “We shouldn’t use any light tonight. Is that alright?”

She nodded, as though she had a choice. “What’s wrong?”

“Those men, they had a hungry look in their eyes,” He explained, He’d hung his rifle on the wall once he came back from the hunt and took it down again, as well as a box of shells, and loaded it. “They might just be passing through, but we probably looked like an easy target to them.”

“Why didn’t we leave with the horses?”

“I can’t risk meeting them out in the open.” He looked at her as though to say, _I can’t risk meeting them with you there_.

He sat in a chair facing the door, holding his rifle in his hands.

Yuna didn’t feel the same terror she’d had in the woods, when Uncle left her to reckon alone with whatever came out of the darkness. In fact, she waited for it, waited for the panic to rise up and choke her. It didn’t come. Charles was calm and capable; he wouldn’t leave her alone in the dark with a gun she couldn’t use.

She retreated to the bed, sat on the edge so she could watch Charles as he watched the door, as night came and the cabin grew colder.

It wasn’t until after midnight that he looked away from the door, called out to her.

“You should get some sleep,” He said, “We’ll leave at dawn.”

“Leave?” She didn’t know why that disappointed her. She walked out to the sitting room area, the only light coming from the faint red of kerosene heater.

They’d planned to stay out here for a week, she thought it would be a full week, and the reality of going back to camp had stayed on the margins of her mind.

“It's not a good idea, keeping you here when those men know where we are. We have a decent amount of meat, if they haven’t stolen it by the morning,” He explained.

“Maybe they’re just passing through, maybe they’ve already gone by now.”

“Maybe. But living the type of life I’ve lived, it’s safer to assume the worst.” He rubbed his eyes and paused for a while, before speaking again. “It’s different for you back home.”

That was an understatement.

“It is different there,” It felt nice to remember, “There’s a beach on the east side, a forest to the north and south, and a guarded gate to the west. I only ever left once, to come here, and I never met any strangers.” _I was never scared._

“It sounds like a prison,” Charles stated, bluntly.

Yuna wouldn’t disagree with him; it was no better than being a slave, that’s how many of the people back home saw it. It _was_ _home_ too, though, and it was the only life she’d known. She didn’t remember Japan, she didn’t remember anything except Hawaii. Perhaps she’d liked her chains, maybe it was better than life on the run, life with strangers.

If she felt stronger she might have been angry at what he said, at him speaking about her life as though he knew anything about it, as though his life right now wasn’t him sitting with a rifle in his hands, ready to shoot some strangers, but it had been a long time since she’d had the energy to feel angry.

“That’s how my brother saw it too,” She admitted.

“It sounds like he made his choice, by coming here.”

 _Maybe it wasn’t much of a choice_. Not for the first time, Yuna wondered why she was trying to find him. She’d imagined he was dead, or in jail, or hurt when he’d stopped sending the letters; but what if he just didn’t want to be found?

“I just want to find him now, that’ll all. I want to know if he’s alive and if he’s not, I want to know that too,” Yuna finally conceded. If he got her talking about her family, she could too. “What about you? Do you have anyone, out there?”

Charles shrugged, “My father lived with my mother’s people for a while, but when we were forced to move from our lands, the three of us fled. A couple of years later, some soldiers captured my mother, took her somewhere. We never saw her again. Around thirteen, I took off on my own.”

“So they might be out there somewhere?”

“My father isn’t worth looking for. And my mother, well I guess I figured if I started looking, I’d never find her and I wouldn’t be able to stop looking.” He looked at her when he spoke, and Yuna wondered how he could tell such a sad story without crying, without hiding himself away, how he could just look in her eyes and say it as though he was talking about someone else entirely.  

 _I can’t let my brother go_ , she wanted to say, but perhaps that was cruel, perhaps he would think she judged him for letting his mother go. Charles had done what he’d felt was right, and she would do the same.

“You should get some sleep, miss,” He repeated.

He wanted to be alone with his thoughts, maybe, or she was too distracting. Nonetheless, she retreated to her bed, laid down on it in her clothes and left the door open.

It was a while before she was able to fall asleep and when she did, her dreams were filled with the sounds of hurried footsteps, and shouts, and gunshots.

* * *

In the morning, Yuna woke alone. Charles wasn’t in the cabin, neither was his satchel, nor his guns or the hides or the food. For one panicked moment, she thought perhaps he’d left her until she heard the sound of horses coming from outside.

She hurried out, perhaps foolishly, and found him loading up the horses. Taima and Kenda were back, as well as two other black ones; they were the ones she’d seen with the strange men.

“Good morning,” Charles called out. He looked tired; he’d tied his hair back in a messy braid, and she could see his eyes were red.

He had killed the men last night, she realized that now. The dream she’d had wasn’t a dream at all. He’d killed them and taken their bodies somewhere, and stolen their horses. Somewhere in the frozen ground around them, he had dug two graves and buried them all while she slept.

Perhaps he saw her realize, like Javier had in the jail, that moment of understanding flickering between them, the _I know that you know and you know that I know that you know._ Men like them had to be quick on the draw, after all.

“They tried to get into the cabin last night,” He explained.

Maybe they had. Or maybe when Charles saw them and saw their horses, he’d decided to rob them. Both possibilities seemed just as likely to her.

“I didn’t hear anything last night.”

It was a foolish thing to say. Perhaps another man would have explained to her what had happened, tried to make her believe him, but Charles simply turned to the horses, finished strapping their supplies, tying their news one to Kenda and Taima so they would follow, and mounted Taima.

Yuna hesitated. She wasn’t about to get on behind him, not today, but her horsemanship only extended to sitting on top and holding the reins; she wasn’t deluded or arrogant enough to think she could make it down the mountain by herself.

Charles waited, as though to see how far her stubbornness extended, before reaching out his hand. He didn’t grab her to plop her on his horse, as Javier did, as Arthur did, just let his hand hang there until she decided to take it.

“Come on. We have to take a different pass down, and it’s a long ride.”

Not _I did it to protect you_ , or _don’t be frightened of me_ , or _I’ll take care of you_. Just the facts.

Yuna took his hand. It wasn't much of a choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always to everyone for all the support. This was a challenging chapter to write and took me a few gos, but I look forward to seeing what you all think.


	7. VII (Charles)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "If I've got to remember that's a fine memory" - Leonard Cohen, _Tonight Will Be Fine_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some references to prostitution and to sex in this chapter.

Arthur Morgan never failed to surprise Charles.

There had been a near massacre in Valentine just two weeks ago when Arthur had sprung Micah out of jail but when Charles said he was going into town for supplies, Arthur had come along with him as though it were the most normal thing in the world. Charles hadn’t figured out whether it was arrogance or apathy on Arthur’s part, but he was grateful for the company nonetheless, and relieved when they rode into town and no one so much as looked at them twice. Arthur, as though having read Charles’ mind, smiled a little smug smile at that.

They picked up the supplies quickly and settled into the saloon for the rest of the afternoon. It was good to be away from camp, now that Micah was back.

Charles waved the bartender over.

“Two whiskeys please.”

He watched and waited as the bartender brought the bottle down from the shelf and began to pour.

“Hey, any chance you happen to have seen a Japanese man pass through here? A farm boy, goes by Kenji. Speaks real good English, no older than 19, 20,” Charles asked. It was worth a shot; he’d been asking at every town they went, knew Javier had been doing the same, John and Arthur too.

The bartender seemed to think on it as he gave them their drinks. “There are some Chinese working on the railroads to the west I seen come through. That ain’t the same thing?”

“No, it ain’t. Thanks anyway,” Charles replied. He slid the money for the whiskeys across the counter and the barkeep left them alone.

“Thanks for the drink. I’ll get the next round.” Arthur took his hat off, ran his fingers through his hair and sipped his drink. They’d promised to take it easy today, no need to get in trouble in a town where they’d already caused a hell of a lot of it. “You think we really gonna find that boy?”

“I don’t know,” Charles admitted. “Living on the run as long as I have, I’ve seen stranger things happen.”

Mostly in the other direction, though; when things seemed most hopeful, they usually went to shit. There’d never been much hope with this to begin with, so maybe it would swing another way this time.

“That boy is long gone, Charles. If he’s still alive out here, I think he don’t wanna be found, and if you think otherwise you ain’t no wiser than that girl,” Arthur countered, not unkindly.

“You think a man could just leave his sister like that?”

“He ain’t a man, he’s a boy, a boy who probably don’t know his sister’s lookin’ for him.” Arthur finished his drink in one big gulp. So much for taking things easy. “Poor girl.”

Charles didn’t think Yuna wanted their pity, or even their sympathy. She asked no one for help, hardly spoke to anyone but the women and Uncle after all this time; Micah’s presence had only made that worse.

Charles, Javier and Arthur had worked the lead she’d brought in with Uncle at the oil fields; Javier said when he’d given her her share - $300 - she’d asked him to give $75 of it to Charles, to pay him back for the money he’d spent on her on the hunting trip. _An honest girl_ , Javier had joked when he brought Charles the story and the money, but Javier felt bad for her too. He played his guitar near her whenever she looked lonesome but never spoke to her, said he knew she didn’t want him to.

Charles had tried to be kind too, in his own way, though if he admitted it to himself, it wasn’t just out of kindness that he’d carved that flower for her. He felt like a damn idiot doing it, a damn idiot giving it to her, and a damn idiot for being upset when she didn’t seem to react to it much at all. What was he expecting? For her to run into his arms? No, the thought of that made him uncomfortable.

If he was being honest with him, he hadn’t thought about it much further than the act of giving it to her. He had no ulterior motives; he just did it. He had never been with a woman he didn’t pay for before. He’d never even been with the same woman twice. That didn’t make him feel ashamed or sad, it was just the reality of the life he’d lived. There was no great love in his past, nobody he spoke about over the campfire like some of the men did, like Javier sang songs about, no picture by his bed, like Arthur had of that dark-haired woman.  

Yuna was beautiful and she carried with her the memory of some other life, one which he’d never had, and he’d wondered what it would be like to speak to someone like that. It was a selfish sort of attraction and so he’d kept away from her since, save for that ill fated hunting trip when she’d looked at him like he was a monster for killing those men.

“I told Dutch we should put her on a train and send her home,” Arthur admitted. He’d motioned to the bartender for a refill and the whiskey, and ordered a couple of beers too. “He said she got _potential_.”

“Potential? She can’t shoot, can’t hunt, can’t ride. ”

“She’s pretty, she got that innocent look like Mary-Beth. They could get away with murder. Mary-Beth already has, several times in fact,” Arthur countered.

“You aren’t as cold as all that, Arthur. I’ve seen how you and Hosea help Lenny, try to show him a way to a different type of life.”

“We’ll all have to find a different type of life soon, the way things are goin’,” Arthur replied.

They focused on their drinks for a while. Arthur took it slower after that first shot, took his time with his second whiskey as Charles finished up his first. They ordered food too, boiled chicken and carrots that looked better than anything Pearson had ever cooked in all the time Charles had been at camp.

It was a question that bordered on the edges of Charles’ mind, but he was never able to bring it into full focus - the future. He hadn’t had to think much further than a week at a time. What he had going on here with this gang was good, the idea of settling down together and buying some land like Dutch said was good too. But maybe it was because Charles hadn’t been with the gang for long and had lived other types of lives before, but _that_ future with the gang seemed uncertain to him too, like a dream which could work out but maybe wouldn’t.

And if it wouldn’t, he would just go on his own again though the parting would hurt him.

“Has anyone ever made it out?” Charles asked.

Arthur wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve. “Sure they have. Mostly the women. There’ve been a couple who met men before we blew through a town, ended up marrying a ranch hand or somethin’. Hosea left for some time when he married Bessie. And John, but let’s not get into that since it’s been such a nice day so far.”

“But they came back, Hosea and John.”

“Sure. It’s hard out there, Charles. I don’t know if you ever tried to go straight but it’s a different world out there. Workin’ for a wage for some other man, day in and day out, starvin’ if things get bad, worryin’ about bills, about debts.”

Charles had never tried his hand at that type of life. He’d lived on his own for long stretches of time in the wild, a couple of years in his early twenties, catching and eating his food, sleeping under the stars or in abandoned cabins, not having to steal but never tried to make a more serious go at it than that. It was easier at that age, he was so full of anger then that it suited him, going months without seeing another person, but now that he’d gotten used to life around other people, he couldn’t imagine going back to that isolation.

“And you? You ever left?” Charles asked.

“Nah, I had my fair share of chances but never could quite make it. Why? You ready to leave already?”

“No, not yet.”

“Alright then.” Arthur patted him on the back, “Now come on and polish off that drink, you’re fallin’ behind.”

They’d polished off one too many before they made their way back to camp. It was nothing like the night Lenny and Arthur shared, they’d all heard about that at camp and Lenny still cringed whenever Arthur yelled his name out a certain way, but it was enough that Charles knew they would both wake up with a mean hangover in the morning.

Arthur sang drunkenly the whole ride, all the way to camp, to Pearson’s wagon to get more booze and even as he sat around the campfire. He couldn’t get much further than, “the cowardly killer who shot Mr. Miller has laid Otis in his grave.” At the last word, he’d laugh and just start over.

Charles wasn’t quite as far gone. He’d ridden with a nice warm feeling in his belly to camp, but he could feel his mood shift as the buzz wore off.

It was that conversation he’d had with Arthur. They’d been at Horseshoe Outlook what, maybe three months now, but their luck would run out soon and they’d have to leave again. Jobs were bound to go bad every once in a while, though hopefully not as bad as Blackwater. He didn’t worry much for himself; he’d be okay, until he wasn’t, but his thoughts turned towards that inevitable pull of the Future, with the capital “f,” and he couldn’t think his way around that. It frustrated him. He wasn’t getting any younger, there would be a day sooner or later when he would have to stop living like this, when he would have to, _want_ to settle down, but it seemed unimaginable, unattainable.

He let himself follow Arthur to the campfire, sat beside his friend and let himself have another drink or two. It was early still, just past sunset, and people were still milling around the camp. Dutch was playing music from his tent and discussing something with Micah; Karen and Sean were joking, or arguing, far off; Mrs. Adler and Miss Yuna were sitting near the Mr. Pearson’s wagon cleaning up after the evening meal. She was wearing a white blouse with a blue ribbon running through the neckline, and a matching blue skirt, her hair tucked behind her ears.

Around the campfire, Lenny, Uncle and Reverend Swanson sat with him and Arthur listening to Hosea speak. The mood was subdued, and Arthur stopped singing once he realized it wasn’t the type of night when anyone would join in.

“Since she was... taken from me, I miss her every day,” Hosea was saying. “She’s what I think about when I wake up and what I’m still thinking about when I go to sleep. Confuses me, confuses me to no end, how a wretched sinner like me could be given someone so perfect, so beautiful to take care of for once in my wretched life, do my best, and then she dies. And I live on. Well, at least for now.”

He looked around at them, as though he was a pastor preaching but his eyes were far away, with Bessie. “She’s been gone many years. All them years I was given and she was not, and we’re expected to believe in judgement? What kind of a judge would save me and take her? A foolish one I can’t respect any more than I can respect myself. I miss her so! Forgive me for being so maudlin but, it’s a fact. I know we all of us seen more death than life these past few months, but, well, sometimes the unfairness of it all confuses me.”

Charles still hadn’t been with the gang for very long and wasn’t the type to ask personal questions, so didn’t know much about Hosea’s wife, save for the fact that he’d never really left this life, even when he was married. It was hard for Charles to understand how someone could be married and _stay_ married living this type of way, going on jobs and not knowing if you were going to come back, working jobs together maybe, but it was no doubt that Hosea missed the woman.

They’d seen plenty of death the past few months, there was no doubt of that either. Jenny, Davey and Mac. John, Arthur, Strauss and Dutch had some trouble in Valentine too, though trouble was putting it lightly.

They sat listening to the crackle of the fire for a good while. Even man seemed weighed down with his own thoughts, by the looks on their faces, by their own regrets and losses.

He didn’t know what led him to speak. It was the alcohol, maybe, or the fact that it was a beautiful night, or maybe he felt he wouldn’t be able to sleep with the weight of it on his chest.

“I’m not much of a story teller so, forgive me but I really,” He struggled to grasp at the words, unused to speaking like this. He focused on the fire, didn’t want to see their faces watching him talk. “I don’t have much to say. Life’s always confused me. I don’t feel I understand it very much. Other human beings seem to understand why they were born but for me, it seems I was born to hurt and suffer myself. That doesn’t always seem like a really good reason. I wish there was another way. But here, in this land, uh. I feel very stuck. But, I’m sorry to complain. It’s just... it’s just so...”

He let his words trail off. He just didn’t know how to say it. The only man sitting around that circle who could have understood some of what he was saying was Lenny. Sometimes Charles felt that the two parts of him were fighting inside him; his father’s people who had been stolen from their homeland, who never wanted to be in the country to begin with, and his mother’s people, who had been here from the very start, but who this country was trying to stamp out. No wonder he felt the way he did. No part of him was wanted here.

Arthur put a hand on his shoulder and kept it there, “Listen, Charles. You’re about the best man I know.”

Charles squeezed his hand as a thank you.

The silence was growing thick and uncomfortable when Uncle spoke up.

He cleared his throat, “Now, let me tell you boys a story. When old Uncle was just a little boy, back when they called me Nephew I guess, not Uncle,” He laughed at his own joke. “My real uncle, uncle Jeb, my mother’s brother’s cousin, he was kind of funny, one of those men you didn’t really want to be let alone with on account of him doing - well, you know what I mean, not right with young men. Anyways, he wanted to take me fishin’. Now I didn’t wanna go, ‘cause if there’s one place men act funny, it’s around fish.”

He laughed again, and there were a few smiles around the campfire as though to say, _what is the crazy old bastard talking about._ Charles smiled too.

Uncle continued, pleased with himself and the response, “Anyway, he tried to take me, all week long he was telling me to come and in the end I sent my brother’s friend Ned instead. Oh, I never liked Ned much either, I figured they could do their damndest to each other. Turns out they did. Only, it weren’t Jeb drowning Ned like I reckoned. Ned, he went and stabbed Jed right in the money maker, turned him in Aunt Jemima!” He was laughed harder now, slapping his knee. “No word a lie.”

The crazy old bastard had done Charles a kindness, in his own way, by shifting the attention away.

“I ain’t sure I understood a word of that,” Arthur said, laughing.

Uncle pretended to be annoyed. “Oh, I’m lost on you fools.”

“Well, you’re lost, that’s for sure,” Arthur quipped. That even got a laugh out of Hosea.

* * *

 

It was a miserable morning. Charles woke up with a mean headache, and when headed to the center of the camp to get himself some coffee, Micah had called out to him, called him a r----n and told him to get something to eat. Hungover and tired and with a sour taste in his mouth, he could have let that go, but he didn’t want Micah to think he was scared of him. He gave the man a chance to back down, stopped and said “excuse me?” but Micah, like all bullies, stood up, got in his face. It felt good to grab him and throw him to the ground, got him a cheer from Tilly who was sitting nearby.

He spent the rest of the morning on his own at the edges of camp, going in only to refill his coffee. There were some pieces of flint he’d picked up last time he’d gone hunting and he took his time shaping them into arrowheads, then mounting them to his arrows. It was something he could have finished in half an hour, but he stretched it out so he could sit quietly for a bit, not have to hear anyone else’s chatter.

He was feeling better by the time Arthur came to find him.

“I need you for something.” He looked aggravated.

“Sure.”

He’d rather be out on the road with Arthur than hanging around camp with the others.

They mounted up and didn’t speak until they were outside of camp.

“So where are we going?” Charles asked.

“Find a new spot to camp. We’re packing up and moving on.” No wonder he was irritated.

“Again?”

They’d barely been at this spot for a few months. The trip up and down the mountain had been brutal; everyone seemed to enjoy settling in here, happy now that Sean was back and the gang was bringing in a little money. The thought of getting everyone packed up again and on the road was exhausting.

“We have to. And fast. We’d already pushed out luck too far before that mess we just made in Valentine and messin’ with Cornwall’s money, those damn stagecoach robberies. That day I took Jack fishing, we met some folk, a feller named Milton, some Pinkertons. They wanted Dutch. They didn’t follow me back but they must know where we are by now, or gettin’ close to it anyway,” Arthur explained, “Bastards told me they’d killed Mac. said it right in front of Jack. That kid... it’s gonna be tough for him.”

They were riding south. What the hell was waiting for them in the south?

“South, Arthur? Really?”

“Yeah, area called Dewberry Creek. Dutch wants us to give it a look, make sure it’s clear and a good place to lie low for a while, ” Arthur admitted. Even he didn’t look at easy about it. “It’s going to be a long ride, Charles.”

“No matter where we camp, the south isn’t going to be a good place to lie low for a lot of us, Arthur,” Charles explained. He was thinking of Lenny, Tilly, Javier, Yuna and himself, the targets they would have on their backs. He thought briefly of Yuna; this was plenty far off from where they’d found her, where her brother’s trail ended; he didn’t think she’d agree to come down here. “I’ve only know Dutch a little while, but... the way he talks, I never thought I’d see him wanting to head south. Where does it end?”

“Where does what end?” Arthur asked. They were riding slow, side by side, saving their horses’ energy; they still had at least a day’s ride ahead of them, probably longer.

“The moving, the running.”

“Dutch don’t see it as runnin’.”

“Call it what you want.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur admitted. “Before, put enough time and distance between you and the problem, eventually it went away. This is a big country. But now... with these Pinkertons...”

He said the last word like a curse.

“We should’ve gone west when we had the chance,” Charles countered, though it was far too late for shoulds. “Soon, we’re going to run right out of land.”

“Could go north, through the mountains again, up to Canada. But I don’t know, we’re gettin’ far too big now, got too many people with us. For a long time, it was just Susan, Dutch, Hosea, John, and me. Now, we got more mouths than we can feed, got people startin’ all types of trouble that we _all_ gotta deal with,” Arthur’s voice trailed off. He was anxious, Charles could basically see it radiating off him like waves, his shoulders tense, his fingers gripping the reins.

“Dutch will see us through.” Charles hadn’t been running with the gang for very long, sure, but there had already been a few near disasters and Dutch had gotten them out of all of them.

“Sure he will.”

They rode through the day and reached the area called Dewberry Creek by night. Arthur consulted his map a couple of times before he looked sure; it was a dried up creek, surrounded by a sparse covering of trees. They’d be better off staying where they were, if this was the other option. Arthur and Charles circled it slowly with their horses.

“Seems very open.”

“Yeah it does,” Arthur agreed, “Ain’t sure it’d be the best in the rain, neither. Think we ought to rest for a bit before looking around?”

“Sure.”

It had been a long hard ride; there would be no going back to Horseshoe Overlook, Dutch had given them a few hours headstart and the gang would be following them. It was so exposed out here that Charles didn’t even feel comfortable stopped to eat; instead, they lead their horses up a way, closer to the trees, and Arthur built their small fire.

Arthur had packed some cooked rice and rabbit for them from dinner the day before and heated it up for them. It was warm and muggy, and the fire was drawing more insects and attention then they needed, so they quickly put it out once the food was ready. Neither of them had much fear of the dark and what lay within it, but they were both on their guard regardless, scanning the landscape around them for any sign of fires, listening for hoofbeats.

“You ever been down this way Charles?” Arthur asked, quietly.

“No, never had much cause to. There isn’t much good down here for a man like me,” Charles explained. There was nowhere in this country that was good for him, but in the south the danger seemed more immediate. It wasn’t that there was anywhere else in this country where men didn’t sneer at him, try to fight him, call him all manner of names for the color of his skin; it just felt like here it would be worse. “Not everyone’s going to be comfortable with this.”

“I know,” Arthur admitted. He did nothing about it. He was a good friend to Charles, had been since he joined the gang, but there were some things a white man couldn’t understand, as well meaning as he was.

Arthur seemed to tense up behind him, looking out into the dark. It didn’t take long for Charles to hear it too; some movement on the other side of the creek.

“You hear it?” Arthur whispered.

“Come on.” Better to be the ones to find, than to be found.

“Horses, or no?” Arthur asked.

“Mount up. We don’t know what we’ll find.”

They did, saddled up and took out their guns too, guided their horses slowly, carefully, through the creek. Arthur’s horse nearly stepped over a body, motionless, hidden in shrubs at the center. Why didn’t they see him before? They had to be more careful.

There was an abandoned camp on the other side of the creek, which Charles had noticed but preferred to explore by daylight. It looked like there had been someone living out here for a while but had left in a hurry; tents were still up, plenty of supplies were laying out in the open. Wordlessly, he looked at Arthur and they both dismounted, began exploring on foot.

There were things to take, but now wasn’t the time for that.

The sound of shuffling, or maybe muffled talk, came from a stationary wagon nearby. Charles felt relieved at that; if there was someone out here who wanted to kill them, they would’ve taken their shot by now, wouldn’t be hiding out. Arthur walked over carefully; Charles covered him with his pistol as he moved some planks covering the wagon out of the way.

A woman hidden underneath was aiming a shotgun straight at Arthur’s face. A small boy and an older girl were huddled around them. They looked absolutely terrified, and people often did very stupid things when they were scared. Charles and Arthur took a step back, held their hands up.

“It’s okay... it’s okay...” Charles made a show of putting his pistol away. “You can come outta there. You okay? We don’t mean you no harm.”

The woman, holding onto the shotgun still, moved one of the boxes she’d been using for cover away and stood up, her children following her, her aim not faltering.

“He said, are you okay?” Arthur asked.

The woman answered in some foreign language.  _Shit._

“Go on, get out of here. Go, we need the land, go,” Arthur said. The family didn’t budge. “Get the hell outta here,” He repeated, getting angry now.

 _This land is no good_ , Charles wanted to say, _leave them alone._ But with the gun pointed at them, with the woman holding it speaking no English, he didn’t want to create more confusion.

The girl stepped forward, wiping her face on the back of her sleeve. “They took our father.” Her English was accented, difficult to understand. He wondered how long they’d been out here, hiding under that wagon, too scared to move.

“Who did?” Charles asked.

“Men, last night.”

“Where? Where did they take him?”

The girl pointed south.

Arthur turned towards him, deeming the gun no threat. “Ain’t no business of ours, Charles. I don’t even speak their language.”

“You ain’t as tough and dense as all that,” Charles snapped back, turning to face his friend. Their interventions into people’s lives often left behind more sadness than anything, Yuna was proof enough of that, but now they had the chance to do some good, like they had for Mrs. Adler. “Come on, Arthur.”

He took the risk and walked towards Taima, hoped Arthur would just listen to him and follow. He did. They mounted up again and began to look for the southern trail.

There were tracks in the mud he could see under the moonlight; thankfully, it looked like it had been a while since it rained here. Hoof marks led them out of the dried up creek. Arthur was following wordlessly, but Charles was still angry.

“You were just gonna send that woman and her children on their way?” Charles asked. He couldn’t help it.

“We’re wanted men! We got Pinkertons breathing down our necks,” Arthur countered. “We should be moving camp, not running off on some wild goose chase.”

“Come on, Arthur. That’s not how you are.” Charles hated it when Arthur spoke with someone else’s words, like he was doing now. Perhaps it was the voice of the man Arthur had been when he was younger, perhaps it was the voice of the worst parts of him that lingered still, but it wasn’t the man Charles saw now.

“Well, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Arthur replied, a bite in his voice.

Charles chose not to answer that. At the railroad tracks, the trail went west, led them to a river. They continued along the shore, stopped every once in a while for Charles to check they were heading in the right direction. They went further south, through a thicket of trees; the trail had dried up but there were some campfires up ahead.

“Careful now,” Charles cautioned.

Both men dismounted, took out their pistols and approached the camp. It looked deserted, but someone had to have built those fires. A chair stood near the water’s edge and a man lay struggling, tied up on the ground. Something didn’t feel right.  

“Quick, cut him free and let’s get outta here,” Charles whispered.

Arthur took out his knife, tore off the cloth that covered the man’s mouth and the rope that bound his arms and feet.

Immediately, the shooting started. Instinctually, they took cover, leaving the man in the middle of it all, though at least he had enough sense to stay on the ground. Three men were coming right at them; they got rid of two of them, quickly, one each with a shot to the head. He could hear Arthur behind him calling out to him, asking why he dragged them onto this mess. Charles didn’t have time to answer. More men emerged from the trees; a couple on foot, but three riders. They dispatched them all, Arthur even shot one in the back as he was running away.

It was efficient, practiced.

“You know something, this is a better camp spot than back there. Much easier to defend,” Charles remarked, moving out from where he'd been taking cover and over to Arthur. They’d been able to kill what, 10 men in as many minutes?

The man was speaking in the same language as his wife, seemed to be saying thank you. Arthur was trying to calm him.

“Charles, go find Dutch, get the caravan to divert here. This spot should work for us. I’ll get this man back to his family,” Arthur offered. “Stay safe out there.”

“Sure.”

Poor Taima. It had been a long day for her too. “One last ride today, girl,” Charles promised, mounting up. Taking it easy on her, he doubled back to the railroad and cut north, bypassing the creek so he might get to the gang faster. It would be slow going for them, traveling in the dark with all those people, but his and Arthur’s detour had cost them plenty of time too.

It didn’t take long for him to find them. Dutch was driving the wagon up at the front, a single lantern lighting their way. Behind him  in another came Miss Grimshaw and Pearson. Hosea and Mr. Strauss drove the third, with the women of the camp sitting the back, a couple of them he couldn’t make out in the darkness sleeping on each other’s shoulders. Javier rounded out the back, holding a shotgun. Charles figured the rest would be coming later, Kieran and the horses, Uncle, Bill, Micah and Lenny, Reverend Swanson.

Charles waved them down and lead them to the camp; they still had a long night ahead.

* * *

Everyone had a late start to the day the next morning.

They’d all stayed up putting the camp together. Bill had ridden out with Javier to make sure the woods around them were clear, while Miss Grimshaw put the rest of them to work setting up the tent and  unloading the wagons as Pearson cooked everyone a nighttime meal. Little Jack was excited that they would be staying somewhere so close to the water, and someone had to constantly keep an eye on him to make sure he didn’t go in alone. It was four in the morning before anyone was able to go to bed, and they all fell asleep quickly, despite how humid and warm it was.

Mrs. Adler and Yuna had come with them after all. Charles had been with the gang long enough now to know that if they had wanted to leave, someone would have taken them to the train station, Hosea maybe or Lenny, and helped them along their way. They had nowhere else to go, Charles supposed. None of them really did.

It was too warm for coffee, but it had become a part of his routine when they were up at Colter and it was hard to break out from it. Though it was noon, the gang was barely starting to wake up, so Charles was able to grab a cup from the first pot of the day. Pearson had laid out some stale bread for breakfast, it looked like they’d lost most of the eggs on the journey down. Charles tore off a piece for himself and sat down at one of the tables overlooking the water.

Not long after, Javier joined him. He grumbled out a “good morning,” and focused on his own cup of coffee. It had taken him a while to comb through the woods last night, and he looked exhausted. It meant he wasn’t up for talking, which suited Charles just fine.

Jack was playing in the water again; someone had pulled his pant legs up and he was trudging through the shallow end in big steps, laughing at the splashes he was making. Yuna was watching him; she was holding her blue skirt up and was deeper in than Jack, letting the water graze up to her calves. Her hair was pulled up off her face, little strands falling down the back of her neck where it was too short to wrap up. She was probably the only person in the camp who didn’t seem to be affected by the heat, other than Jack. They were the only ones who seemed to be enjoying themselves too, laughing at nothing, holding each other’s hands as they explored the shore.

Maybe he looked at her for longer than he should have. He felt Javier shift beside him, turned to find him smirking.

“What?” Charles asked.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” Javier looked smug.

Charles wasn’t in the mood to engage. It didn’t mean anything; he had gotten lost in his own thoughts while looking out at the water. Whatever Javier was hoping to get out of this teasing, Charles wouldn’t give it to him; he looked down at his coffee instead. Lenny joined them soon after, chewing on a piece of bread. He was a good kid, immature sometimes but dependable and honest. He was talkative, always smiling, so different from what Charles was like at that age.

“Nice morning, huh?” Lenny greeted.

Javier grinned, looked at Charles but luckily stayed silent.

“Sure,” Charles replied.

“And fine conversation,” Lenny added, quirking an eyebrow.

“As always,” Javier added. “Say, Lenny, you ever been down this far before?”

Lenny shook his head, “No, not since I was a kid and I don’t remember much. My family was pretty quick to get away from here. We ain’t that far south though. Maybe a day’s ride more and we’d really be in deep shit. What about you?”

“No,” Charles said.

“Me either. I came up through California, was in the west for a while before I met up with Dutch and them,” Javier explained.

“Tilly used to run around here with her old gang. Think we ought to talk to her, figure out what’s what?” Lenny asked, through a mouthful of bread.

“You do that,” Javier agreed. There was a comfort in talking to people who understood you, and not having to walk a white man through everything. Lenny made to get up and fetch Tilly, but Javier called out after him, “Grab Miss Yuna too.”

When Charles gave him a look, Javier held his hands out, feigning innocence. “What? She ain’t white either.”

It annoyed Charles to be teased, to be made the center of attention in this sort of smirking, mocking way. He finished off his coffee and got himself ready to leave, but Lenny had rounded up the women and brought them over. Yuna was barefoot; when she sat beside Charles, he could see there was mud on her legs.

They greeted each other with good mornings.

“Lenny said you want to know about Lemoyne?” Tilly had been through it down here, Charles had heard a little about it, some man whose throat she’d slit down here. “You gotta be careful and watch your back down here, is all. You’ll get called plenty of names, not much different from up north, but there’s just more people here who’ll do it to your face.”

“We ain’t going to be served everywhere, either, gotta watch out going into saloons and shops,” Lenny added.

Tilly nodded, “Some places let you in so long as you got a white man with you.”

It was nothing Charles wasn’t used to. Even just to be in this country was an exertion of effort. It just seemed worse here, he’d have to choose when to fight and when to take it and walk away.

“Me too?” Yuna asked. She’d turned to look at Tilly, and there was some sweat on the back of her neck; she wiped it off with her hand.

“All of us,” Tilly confirmed.  

“Pretend you don’t speak English, miss, like you do with Micah,” Javier said, smiling. He was in a mood today.

The girls laughed at that, some inside joke that Charles wasn’t a part of. He was ready to go; he was done with his coffee anyway, and he’d had his fill of people today. They could laugh all afternoon if they wanted, he had things to do.

He said thank you to Tilly and headed for Taima. The first day in a new town, Charles usually liked to do a little bit of exploring, figure out what there was to hunt, who lived around here. He didn’t have the talent of building long cons like Hosea, but hustle up a lead or two usually by just picking a good spot to sit, and wait, and listen. It would be nice to get a bath too, if he could find a hotel around here.

Miss Grimshaw was up and shouting at the women, saying something about ideas above their station. Sean, sitting near where Abigail had started the laundry, joined in on the fight that was brewing; “Don’t you worry, Miss Grimshaw, you ol’ crone. I’ll keep them girls in line. If I have to whip ‘em, I will!” Someone would get slapped soon, and Charles didn’t want to be around for it.

He checked Taima’s saddlebags and fed her a sugar cube. It was probably her second one today, if Kieran had gotten to her first, but that was alright, she’d had a long day yesterday and deserved it. She ate it happily.

“Charles!” Yuna called out to him as he mounted Taima. She held a pair of boots and papers in her hand. “Are you going into town?”

“Not sure,” He replied.

“I have a letter to post. For my father,” She said. She seemed to be waiting for something but he didn’t know what.

“Do you want me to take it for you?”

“Well. But,” She hesitated, “I can come with you?”

The last time she’d caused him to change his plans, it hadn’t gone very well. Instead of a week of hunting, he’d ended up having to kill two men. He wanted to be alone; it was a part of who he was, something he needed to do to focus. She was expecting him to say yes or else she wouldn’t have her boots; she was also in a rush to get out of camp, or else she would have stopped to put them on.

It probably had something to do with Miss Grimshaw’s yelling.

He wanted badly to say no, tell her to ask somebody else. He suspected she wouldn’t, and wondered for a moment why she’d chosen to ask him. They hadn’t really spoken since the hunting trip but that was likely more than than she’d spoken to any of the other men, save for uncle. With him, she alternated between fear and friendliness; it confused him.

“Sure,” He conceded, “But I’m not planning on staying long.”

She lifted up her skirt a little when she put her boots on.

“Sit side saddle, we should be careful here. I’ll pull you up, alright? Stand by Taima and face away.”

He reached down to her from where he was mounted and pulled her up; she pushed off on the stirrup and sat behind him, her legs hanging off Taima’s left side. He waited for her to adjust herself, to wrap her arms around his waist, and took off.

It was slow going. He had a vague idea of where the town was from the map Miss Grimshaw had hung up in the camp, but it was an unfamiliar area, he wanted to be careful. The soil grew redder the further away from camp they got, the air was hotter too now that they were on the open road and out from the cover of the trees. He felt himself sweating, moreso with the heat of Yuna’s body against his. A bath sounded good.

They passed a lot of people on the road -  he looked away when they were white, moved to edge of the road - and circled the town before he decided where to hitch Taima. There were plenty of saloons, hotels, shops but it took some time to see which ones would agree to let them in.

They dismounted.

“I’ll take you to the post office first,” Charles said. They’d passed it earlier. “I have some things I need to do. You’ll be alright on your own? We can meet back up in an hour?”

“Yes, I’ll be okay on my own for an hour.” She responded. If he knew her better she might think she seemed annoyed, like she wanted to say, _yes, I’m not an idiot, I can last for an hour_. If she’d said it out loud, it might have made him laugh a bit.

He left her in front of the post office, headed for the hotel and paid for a bath. It felt good to take his sticky clothes off him; he only wished he’d brought some clean ones to change into, but he still had some riding ahead of him to do and there was no use getting two sets of clothes dirty. It felt good to be naked, to untie his hair and run his fingers through it. There was ever enough privacy to do something like this in camp; whenever he changed, it was quick, in the woods, away from prying eyes. This was nice, just to be alone.

He let himself savor the feel of stepping into the tub, of getting his hair wet, feeling the grime and sweat wash off him. The water was only lukewarm, which suited him just fine. Sitting like this for the next hour or so was just what he needed.

When the inevitable knock came at the door and he heard a woman’s voice ask if he needed any help, he hesitated. It had been a while since he’d been touched by someone or had any kind of sexual release, even just by himself.

Just as quickly, he decided otherwise. “I’m alright, thank you,” came out of his mouth, before he even had the chance to think of why he’d declined.

He washed his own hair and body, slowly, carefully, and tried not to think about how much nicer it might feel if a woman was doing it. It didn’t take him long, despite how much he tried to stretch it out, and it was only twenty minutes before he was stepping out of the water, putting his clothes back on and  heading back out into the dusty, red streets of Rhodes.

Yuna was just where he’d left her, sitting outside the post office. She’d bought a hat, not one of them fancy ones like Miss O’Shea wore sometimes when she sat outside, but a straw one, the type someone who worked outdoors might wear. She’d attached a cream ribbon to it though, tied beneath her chin. It made her look peculiar and interesting, though he wasn’t sure yet if she was either of those.

“Finished already?” She asked. He noticed now, here in the sunlight, that she had freckles on her shoulders.

“Yes.” His hair was wet, dripping down his back. He didn’t have to explain what he’d been up to.

“I walked around some. There’s a man selling ice cream down the street, and a little theater. Sometimes a circus acts comes through the town, they still have their posters up, and there's a dance on Friday.”

If he was with someone else from the camp, one of the other women, even Tilly who was so young, they would’ve done a lot more in twenty minutes. They might have picked up a lead or, at the very least, a pocket or two. She gave him that feeling again, that she was something completely alien and strange to this world. If he was being naive, he might have thought that it was the type of world he might have belonged in, if his mother hadn’t been taken away. But he doubted that. He would probably be exactly where he was now.

“Have you ever had it, before?” She asked.

“Had what?"

“Ice cream.”

“Once.” He remembered his father giving it to him, when they were living somewhere outside of Washington, when his mother was still around. They’d both been amazed at it, swirled it around in their mouths until it melted and became warm as soup.

She wasn’t good at hiding what she wanted. That was something someone would have to teach her if she was going to stick around with the gang.

“We have time to try some. If you want,” He offered.

Yuna smiled, not in the open way she had with Jack or with Tilly, something tighter, more constrained, but a smile nonetheless. She was sweet and pretty, he thought not for the first time; he hoped she could get out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to everyone for reading. I've been enjoying writing this, and really look forward to seeing what you all think.


	8. VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another shot. Javier & a heist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "little joker" was a device invented/used by bank robber George Leonidas Leslie.
> 
> Warning: racism (but no racial epithets).

Yuna felt lighter at Clemens Point somehow, happier. Maybe it was because it overlooked the water and so it didn’t feel as closed off as the first; she could walk along the small dock, wet her feet and legs in the water, look out at the boats that dotted the horizon far away and imagine who might be on them, and where they might be going. Maybe it was because she’d finally written to her father, and in a way it had felt like she was passing a burden off onto someone else. He didn’t read or write English and would have to get someone to read it for him so she was careful, but the message was clear:  _ I don’t know where he is, I don’t know where to look _ . She didn’t ask for advice or guidance or help - there were nothing he could do or say from Hawaii that might help her, and he certainly couldn’t come here. She simply  _ dumped _ it, put it in a letter that would weeks to reach him and over weeks for her to receive the reply, and in that way she bought herself time too; time not to think about the next step, time not to panic, time to accept that this was her life  _ for now _ .

It helped, it really did. She somehow didn’t feel as frightened or as small. It might have simply been a matter of time - she was getting to know these people she lived with - but she still repressed the parts of them that disturbed her to think about. She packed it away somewhere, their talk about money and jobs and banks and scams, and tried not to wonder when one of the men came back from a job how many people he had killed. She wasn’t so innocent either; Arthur Morgan had told her working that lead in the oil fields with Uncle would get her hands dirty, not filthy, and she certainly felt it when the men came back, when Javier gave her her share. She wondered about those men in that saloon, about the one who she danced with whose name she had forgotten; were any of them killed? Did any of them see those other men getting killed, as they most certainly had been? She didn’t dare ask though. She wanted to forget completely, felt the temptation to slip into total denial but she worked hard to avoid that; there was some balance she had to find, a level of awareness she had to reach, of what these people were that wouldn’t completely paralyze her.

It was easier with some than with the others. With the women, it wasn’t so bad anymore; it was mostly easy chatter now, about their day, about their chores, about the people in the camp. She’d learned a lot from them, about Arthur’s old fiancee, who almost everyone disliked. She learned about Dutch and Hosea, how they had met and what their “family” had looked like in those early days, mostly from Miss Grimshaw. She learned a little about John Marston from Abigail and from Jack, though himself was often drunk and almost always in a foul mood. With some of the men, it was alright too. Kieran was as new as her, and even more frightened. Lenny was friendly too, the only one that was her age; he reminded her a bit of Kenji, though Kenji was more serious and not as quick to smile. Charles too, though he was older, though he was reserved and kept to himself, she felt good when she was around him. He had done a lot for her already and when she asked him for something, she didn’t feel as though he expected anything back. With him, it was the easiest to pretend, pretend that she was somewhere else,  _ someone  _ else, that she fit into the world like other people did, people who worried about their work and their family and their home and not bullets and death.

That day in Rhodes, they’d gotten the ice cream, walked around town, went into a couple of shops. Yuna was fascinated by things that she could tell had lost their novelty to him years ago, but he was patient as she tried a carbonated drink for the first time (she scrunched up her nose when the bubbles hit the top of her mouth, and gave Charles the rest). She tried fruit pastilles too, which she liked, and bought Bicycle playing cards, though she said she didn’t know how to play. He told her she could take them back home with her, to show everyone else, which was a kind thing to say. 

There was something else too, which embarrassed her to think of now. They passed a photo studio and Yuna mentioned she’d never had a picture of her taken before. It was not something which had ever been available to her, to anyone in her family and it was nothing more than a curiosity, just like the soda had been and the fruit pastilles and all those other things. He’d indulged her, though she’d felt silly sitting in front of that camera, being directed by the photographer into doing all sorts of silly poses. Charles had watched her from near the door and when the photographer asked whether she wanted one with  _ her husband _ , that had spoiled the fun. She didn’t know how it happened, who had spoken and what they’d said, but they took one picture together and went back to camp after that in silence.

There were others at camp who she felt it would always be difficult with, no matter how long she stayed. Micah Bell, mostly, but Bill Williamson too; she’d seen him hold down Keiran more than once and threaten to hurt him. Sean had done the same, though the women said he was harmless otherwise.

Javier too, still; it was difficult to be comfortable with someone who had held a gun to her, who had brought her into this life. When he asked her to travel to a town in north Lemoyne with him, to help him get into a bank, she’d remembered that feeling and it was because of it that she said yes. She didn’t have much of a choice regardless of who asked her - her place living with these people were precarious - but with him, the prospect of saying no, of begging off, didn’t cross her mind. He was no longer holding a gun to her, but he might as well have been.

He hired a stagecoach for them from Rhodes, which she was infinitely grateful for, his horse following them; Yuna didn’t want to ride behind him for long, holding onto him like that, and she was still so slow and clumsy to ride a horse on her own, if someone even agreed to let her borrow one. There were other people in the stagecoach too, which was a relief - travelling with strangers meant they couldn’t talk, wouldn’t  _ have _ to talk.

And they didn’t, not really, not until they reached the town, took their luggage down, hitched Boaz. He waited until the stagecoach had driven out of sight before he turned to her.

“I stole some papers off a man in Valentine,” He explained, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Yuna wondered if she would ever get used to that. “He was planning to rob a bank and had the plans on him. It won’t be a big take, these small towns never have much, but it will be something.”

“I won’t use a gun.” She meant to say  _ I can’t _ .

Javier shook his head, “This isn’t that type of job. Come, I’ll explain more in the room.”

His demeanor seemed to change as they walked into the hotel, something no one else would have caught until they happened to be looking at the moment of transformation. It was a hundred tiny things; he made his chest broader, held his head higher, smiled a mild sort of smile that was friendly but not threatening. The man sitting at the front counter, however, seemed indifferent. Yuna guessed no amount of charm down here could make up for the fact that they weren’t white.

“Can I help you?” The man was missing his two front teeth.

“A room for me and my wife. We have some business in town. Name is Hernandez,” Javier placed the money on the table. 

The man seemed to weigh the decision for a few seconds, giving them an unpleasant look, finally taking a dirty-looking handkerchief out of his pocket and using it to pick up the cash, as though he wanted a barrier between himself and something that Javier touched. If Kenji was here, he would have called the man a fucker. Yuna didn’t dare look Javier in the eye now, but she bet he was thinking something along the same lines.

He handed them the key just the same, through the layer of the handkerchief, terrified or disgusted by the thought of even secondary contact. In slow and graceful gestures, Javier returned the favor; he untied his red scarf from around his neck and used it to pick up the key. Yuna followed Javier up the stairs to their room.

Javier muttered something under his breath as he locked the door behind them, something that sounded like the Spanish equivalent of “fucker” anyway, and put the bags he’d carried with him all the way from camp on the bed. One, he left beside the door. The other, he opened. Inside, she was surprised to see, was a dress, something silk and ivory and finer than anything she’d ever worn before, and matching gloves. There was a string of pearls too, a pair of pink heeled shoes, four thick rolls of cash and jewelry boxes, for rings and necklaces and bracelets. From his pocket he pulled a small device, something that looked like a metal disk with some wires attached and added it to the bag.

“Look, it will be okay,” He smiled a different type of smile now, one that was a little crooked, perhaps closer to his real smile. “I will do most of the talking before you get there, and all of the robbing too. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to go in to make a deposit, half the cash and the jewelry. All you need to do is play the part of a spoiled wife, act like you’re worried about your jewels, and give me some time when we’re in the vault room.” That explained the fancy dress, at least. 

“What’s the wheel for?” She asked, pointing at the disc. Maybe if she tried to be more involved, tried to at least pretend to have some idea, some agency, then she wouldn’t feel like such a fool.

Javier’s smile grew into a grin, like a child with a toy, “It is called the little joker. That’s the best part. When we’re in the room, you make a distraction, I will take off the dial knob on the safe and put this inside. It records where the tumblers stop, see?” He held it carefully in his hands. “The deepest cuts in the wheel show the numbers of the combination. You go back to camp, I deposit the rest of the cash tomorrow so they have to open the vault again. Tomorrow night, I will sneak back in the bank at night. Then, it’s a matter of taking this little guy out again and trying different combinations of the numbers until I get the safe open.”

It was certainly more elegant that blowing the safe open with some dynamite or shooting his way through the bank. She took a moment to think about, try to see how she felt, weigh it within herself; it didn’t make her feel anything, helping him with something like this. The reality of these people he was robbing felt abstract and distant, far away enough that there was no guilt either. Perhaps that might have frightened her but she had enough to deal with without feeling guilty about  _ not _ feeling guilty.

“Sounds easy,” Yuna said, tried to believe it.

“Yes! Easy,” Javier repeated. He put everything carefully back in the bag, but seemed to hesitate for a moment over what to do, his hand floating over the top of it as though deciding what to do with it. Finally, he put it under the bed, though he seemed to watch Yuna out of the corner of his eye as he did so. “I’m going to walk around town for a bit, see if I hear anything that might be good for us. You good to stay here?” 

“Yeah, fine.” 

“If you get hungry, ask the asshole down there to bring you up something. It’s on me.” He stopped to look in the mirror, wrapped the red scarf around his neck, and took off.

Alone, she thought of the hunting trip with Charles. She remembered being alone, looking through his things, brushing her hair with his brush. It seemed insane now, looking back at it, such a risky but intimate thing to do. It was impossible to explain to herself what had driven her to do that. Javier left his bag here, it seemed to stare at her from the door, like some type of test but Yuna didn’t feel the same temptation to open it, the same thrill at the thought of touching his things.

Instead, she made herself a small bed on the floor at the far side of the room, borrowing a pillow and blankets from the bed. With Charles, she had been brave enough to assume that she would get the bedroom and that he would take the couch, but with Javier, she somehow didn’t feel she could. It was safer to give up the bed altogether.

She turned off the light and laid down, fully clothed, taking nothing but her boots off. Underneath, she wore only a camisole and her drawer and couldn’t, wouldn’t, sleep in those. Her shyness was not motivated by some vanity, any sense of  _ a man couldn’t can’t himself if he sees so much as my ankle _ . It felt like taking off a layer that seperated them, a boundary which she would rather keep.

Outside her window, she could hear horses moving slowly through the street. It wasn’t paved, and their hoofs sounded as though they were sink in with every step, raising themselves up with a  _ plop _ . She stared at the ceiling and listened, heard the muffled sounds of men’s talking, of their steps on the wood patios of the shops, and as the night came in, she heard a banjo playing and women’s laughter.

She slept, and dreamt of being in the midst of it. The town was transformed though, turned into something else entirely, more like a city, with trams and public gardens and music. It felt warm, from the inside and out, felt happy, like she felt at home. There was a man in the dream too, but she couldn’t see his face, could only feel him at the edges of it. Maybe it was Kenji, but that didn’t feel quite right.

Yuna could have stayed in that dream forever, but woke up instead with a start. Someone was trying to get in the room, a key was turning in the lock. She;d become such a light sleeper since coming to this country; she remembered when she could sleep through thunderstorms at home.

It was Javier, returned from whatever he was doing out there, humming something to himself. He made his way through the room with only the moonlight to guide him, fell on the bed with a heavy  _ thump _ , and peeked over the side to look at her.

“You’re still awake?” He smelled drunk, was talking funny. “Nervous huh? It’ll be okay. Look, when I first came to this country, I had  _ nobody _ looking out for me. You got a whole family. That’s pretty good, no?”

“I was asleep until you came in.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Lying on the bed, Javier had begun to undress, taking off his scarf and his vest, clumsily begin to pull his pants off without getting up. He put his gun on the bedside table. Yuna looked away.

“You didn’t have to sleep on the floor, you know.” He threw his pants on the floor, followed by his shirt. “I’m a gentleman,” He insisted, and she could hear the smile in his voice.

“I’ll remember that for next time,” Yuna replied. He laughed a little at that.

“You know, you’re lucky.” Some of the men she knew back home, when they drank a little too much, would clam up, sit quietly in the corner, have sad eyes, think of sad things. Other ones would flirt, try to pull women in their pants, bury their faces in their hair. A lot of them just liked to talk, as though the drink unlocked their voice box. Javier seemed like the latter. “When I came to this country, I spoke no English, I was afraid. I was starving, feeble, and alone. I thought I would die crossing the desert. I thought I would get here and be sent back. I thought I would be  _ killed  _ here. Instead, I was simply starving because nobody cared.” Yuna finally turned to him; he was under the blanket, laying on his side, his head plopped on his elbow looking at her. She could see the top of his chest, see all types of scars. “Then I met Dutch. I was stealing chickens and I met him doing the same.” He chuckled. “And we laughed and he took me in and fed me and he clothed me. I don’t believe I shall ever go back home now for that gang, that camp, that’s my home now.”

“It’s different for me,” She replied. She’d said that before, but hearing Javier’s story, she wasn’t sure how different it was after all.

He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly; if she looked up, she could see the outline of his face in the light of it.

“It isn’t different,” He insisted. “I know girls like you, my village is full of them. My sister, she didn’t leave that village until she got married. My mother, she was born and buried there. That’s how life is for people like us.” Small people, he seemed to say, nobodys. “Out here, it isn’t like that. There’s nobody looking out for you, there’s nobody that will help you. You could end up stealing chickens, like me.”

It surprised her to think that he came from a home not unlike her own. She knew a lot about the women, but the pasts of these men remained mostly unclear to her. Charles had shared a bit, Sean did too, but she hadn’t thought much about anyone else. Yuna thought of the boys she’d grown up with, of her brother; how could life take someone so far away from home, from working the soil, to robbing and killing people?

He continued to look at her, as though to say,  _ what do you think of that _ ?

If he wanted to feel better about kidnapping her, she would give that to him.

“Maybe you’re right,” Yuna conceded. Maybe she would have ended up broke and starving, if she’d continued to look for Kenji and burned through the money. Home was her way out though, that path was still open to her in a way that seemed closed for Javier. “But I was being careful.”  _ Before you came along _ .

Javier tutted, “And what would you have done when someone came along and stole that gold you’ve been carrying around, huh?”

Suddenly, Yuna felt cold. A million different ways of responding flashed in her mind, all drenched in panic. She could play dumb, pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, but there was nothing else he could have meant, except for the coins she’d hidden. That didn’t feel like it would help her get anywhere. She tried not to look at her boots where they sat against the wall but told herself that if he wanted them, he would have taken them long ago.

“It’s not mine.” Admitting it was the only thing she could do. “It’s my father’s. I’m going to give it back to him. How do you know about it?”

“Who did he steal it from?” Javier deflected.

“Someone in Japan,” Yuna answered. Javier quirked an eyebrow at her, disbelieving, wanting to know more, but she didn't even know herself. “That’s all I know. I don’t know how hid it, I don’t know anything, but they couldn’t find it or else they would have killed him. It’s why they sent him to Hawaii. They sold him to one of the plantations and got their money back that way, and when he got there and the owners saw he had thief stamped on his papers, they cut off his hand.”

She had hid those details about herself in the beginning when she first joined the camp, but it didn’t feel like it mattered anymore. No one cared, not really; they all had stories that were far worse than hers.

It had scared her, the stump where her father’s hand had been, she remembered, when she first met him when she and Kenji were brought to Hawaii. She hadn’t wanted to touch him, which shamed her to think of now. He worked the same as anyone though, learned how to grip the tools, to plant, and to work the harvest. The image of him standing out in the sun surrounded by sugarcane stalks, fanning himself with his hat, suddenly came to her.  _ The way things are going, I’ll probably never see him again _ .

“Your father’s a thief, too?”

“He stole _ once _ and he paid for that.” It must have been different. Things were bad in Japan, they’d had nothing. It was an act of desperation, it had to be something like that.

Javier finished his cigarette in silence, as though weighing her words.

“When I was a little boy, some men came to my village. They accused five men of spreading rebellion and heresy. They took them into the street, stripped them naked, castrated them and fed them to the pigs while the rest of the village was forced to watch. One of those men was my uncle. Another was a friend of my parents. And you know what those men had done?” He asked. “They had  _ suggested  _ that the men of the village demand a fair wage from the local landowner - not, not that he share all he had, just that he give enough that the people might live. Mexico could be a land of plenty but the people with the power there, they rather kill than share the smallest little piece. All my life, I think about this.”

“You sound like my brother,” Yuna admitted. “He wanted to buy a camera so he could take pictures of the living conditions in the camps and keep a record of all the injuries. No one would sell one to him, though, not when they found out what he wanted it for. He even learned Japanese so he could talk to the older workers. Before he left, he was trying to organize a strike.”

“They made him leave?”

“The overseers? No. I don’t think they knew, the strike didn’t go anywhere. He said he didn’t want to live like that anymore.”

Javier sat up in the bed to look at her. “Leave him, then. He made a new life. Why do you want to drag him back to that hell?”

Charles had called it a prison, Javier called it hell. Her brother would agree with both assessments.

“I wouldn’t have come if he hadn’t stopped writing,” Yuna explained. Maybe Javier would understand. “He could be in trouble, or he could be sick or hurt. If you ever met him, you would know that no one could ever  _ drag _ him anywhere.” Javier made a sound, like a groan, like he wanted to say something, to disagree, but Yuna continued. “For 265 years, Japan was closed off from the rest of the world. No one could leave, not until 30 years ago. We’ve known where our ancestors have lived and died for  _ 265  _ years. It means something to us. It means something not to know, too.”

She remembered something though, a question he’d deflected. “How do you know about my money?” Yuna repeated.

“I looked through your things,” Javier responded. No apology, nothing. What did she expect, living with a bunch of criminals? “I had to know who you were. I brought you to the camp, you were my responsibility.”

“Who else knows?”

“No one,” He yawned loudly.

“Don’t steal from me,” Yuna said. She could think of nothing else to say. It wasn’t a threat, or a plea, or a command. It just was.

“Didn’t you hear anything I said? We’re a family. Family doesn’t betray each other.”

He was starting to annoy her. She turned his back to him, pulling the blankets further up her body.

Javier laughed at that, “I guess you’re done talking to me. Good night?”

“Good night.”

* * *

 

Javier fell asleep quickly and deeply; she could tell that by his snores. Yuna didn’t sleep at all,  _ couldn’t _ after that conversation. She stayed awake, listening to the sounds of the street even when there was nothing to listen to anymore except for the insects buzzing at their window and the occasional dog barking.

When the sun rose, she got up carefully, pulled the bag out from where Javier had hidden it under the bed. He was sleeping on his stomach wearing only his underwear, the blankets having been pushed down to the floor somewhere as he slept.

Carefully, she pulled out the dress he’d brought for her, the string of pearls and the heels. In the daylight - or maybe it was because she felt exhausted - the money seemed to have multiplied; she let herself imagine taking it, taking it and the jewelry and her boots and getting far away from here. He would find her, she knew, he was probably already awake or about to wake, would catch her before she even made it out of the door. She didn’t dare touch it.

Keeping an eye on Javier, she undressed quickly, left her blouse and skirt on the ground and replaced them with the silk and lace dress. It was beautiful, nicer even than the dresses that Molly O’Shea wore. Putting it on made her feel more confident somehow, made it easier to imagine going into the bank and pretending she was some one’s rich wife, the type of woman who had jewels and was looking for a bank vault to keep them in. Yuna wondered if that’s what Javier’s fine clothes did for him too, put aside and in the past whoever he was when he was in his village.

She brushed her hair with her fingers, tried to pin it as best as she could without using a mirror. The string of pearls was next, the gloves, and finally the shoes, though they were uncomfortable and tight and difficult to walk in. They would be hard to run in, if she needed to run; she hated that that was how she’d started to think.

As Yuna had suspected, Javier had been awake. As soon as she was fully dressed, he made a show out of pretending to wake up, stretching and rubbing his eyes.

“Good morning,” He said, through a yawn.

“Good morning.”

“You look nice.” Javier got out of bed, took his pants off the floor and putting them on quickly. He went to where his bag sat by the door and took out a fresh shirt and a different scarf, a blue one this time. He turned to her as he was buttoning it up. “You feel good about today?”

“Yes. It was easier than I thought it would be when I went with Uncle,” She admitted. She’d thought of how to distract them too, when she’d been lying awake all night.

“It  _ will _ be easy. I’ll go in first. Once I get them to take us to the vault, you’ll take over.” He had a comb in his bag, which he used to slick his hair back and retie it. “I’ll get you back to the Rhodes on the afternoon coach and you can get a ride back to camp from there with Pearson. He’ll be in town.”

“He knows I’ll be coming?”

Javier sat on the edge of the bed to put his boots on. “He knows. Don’t worry, I’ve thought of everything. This isn’t like working with Uncle.”

Yuna smiled a little at the memory of that, the old man passing out drunk in the woods. She remembered how Charles had looked coming out from behind the trees, how angry he’d been at Uncle. She thought suddenly of the taste of ice cream.

She waited for Javier to finish getting ready. He packed their things in his bag, which she carried and followed him out of the door and out of the hotel. He took some cash out of the other bag, hid it in his jacket pockets - the half he was going to deposit tomorrow - and held the bag with the rest money and jewelry in one hand. When they neared the bank, he held out his arm for her to take. Yuna took it and tried to mimic him, learn from how he walked, how he smiled as he passed people in the street.

It must have worked, whatever he was doing, whether it was the charm or their clothes. One of the bank porters spotted them as they approached, hurried to hold the door open for them. Javier tipped him, putting the dollar bill directly into his shirt front pocket, and headed for the teller. He moved with such confidence; frankly, Yuna wouldn’t have known what to do in here without him. She’d never been in a bank, never had any reason to, and she tried not to look around, tried to act as though this was nothing to her, just another errand.

They didn’t have to wait in line long. A balding man in a suit approached them, holding his hand out.

“Richard White, assistant manager at your service. Is there anything I can help you with, Mr...” He trailed off, waiting for Javier to fill in the rest.

“Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez.” Javier shook the man’s hand. “I have quite a large deposit to make. Is your Is there a place where we could talk privately? Somewhere with your manager, perhaps?”

“Of course, of course, we’re at your service,” Mr. White repeated. “Follow me, please.”

He lead them past a door that took them behind where the tellers were sitting and to an overly decorated room that smelled like cigars, with empty tables and chairs. It led off into a set of other offices which disappeared down the hall _.  _ Mr. White snapped his fingers at a porter who sat in the corner, who put the newspaper he was reading beneath his chair and stood at attention.

“Would you like anything to drink in the meantime?” Mr. White asked.

“My wife will have ginger drink. For me, I would like to get on our business.”

“Of course, sir.”

The porter disappeared down the hall to fetch her ginger drink, whatever that was, and Mr. White led Javier down that way too. Before they left her alone, Javier turned to her, just for a split second, and winked.

Her ginger drink arrived soon after that, and Yuna forced herself to drink it. She didn’t know whether the type of woman who wore gloves would take them off when she needed to touch something; Yuna remembered Uncle’s comments about her hands though, how no one could ever believe she was anything other than a farmgirl or a maid, and decided to keep the gloves on. The porter was back to reading the newspaper, likely wasn’t interested much in what she was doing, but it felt like these small details mattered.

They were gone for a while and when they were done, seemed to practically spill out of the offices, laughing loudly, slapping each other on their backs. A third man was with them, probably the manager, holding the bag with a huge smile plastered across his face. Whatever Javier had done in there, it had worked.

“Here’s the little lady,” The manager said. He held out a hand for Yuna; she stood up and shook it. “Walter Stevens, at your service.”

Everyone here seemed to be at their service.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Yuna said, trying to smile like Javier’s did, hoping it reached her eyes. Javier stood at her side, put his hand on her back. It didn’t quite touch, just hovered.

“I explained to Mr. Stevens how attached you are to your pretty little things, sweetheart,” Javier said, “He has kindly agreed to show us where he’ll be keeping them safe for you.”

“I understand you’re catching a boat back to Buenos Aires later today, Mrs Hernandez. If you can spare us a few moments, we’ll have you on your way without delay,” The manager said.  _ Buenos Aires? What is that? _

They weren’t really interested in her though, she was just his little wife in this tale that Javier had spun for them. It was all the better; it was less pressure on her to put on a show. They followed them, past the offices, through a door the manager had to unlock with two armed guards standing in the front, and finally to a tiny safe room. The safe was built into the wall and there was nothing else there but a small table. They crowded in.

“As you can see, it’s entirely safe in here. Whenever you’re back in the country, Mr. White or I will be happy to access it for you.” With his back turned to them, the assistant manager turned the dial and open the safe. Javier didn’t even try to look, he didn’t need to. The manager had placed the bag on the ground and was handing Mr. White the cash to place in the safe. He reached for one of the jewelry boxes.

“I’d like to look at them once more, if you wouldn’t mind indulging me,” Yuna said.

Javier chuckled, “Of course, darling. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

Mr. Stevens seemed like he wanted to say no, but didn’t dare to. He took the velvet jewelry boxes out and placed them carefully on the table. Yuna opened them one by one; she didn’t know what she was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the jewelry from the women in the camp. A lot of the things were Molly’s, her earrings, her bracelets. One ring was clearly Miss Grimshaw’s, a necklace was in there that she couldn’t place but that looked familiar. Yuna picked the prettiest thing, Molly’s pearl earrings, took them out of the box and made as though to try them on. She didn’t even have her ears pierced.

“One last time,” She said, tried to act bashful.

“Women and their trinkets, I understand entirely, Mrs. Hernandez,” The manager replied.

When it was at her ear, she let it drop, just like that. It fell to the ground and before the men could react, she moved it with her foot, just a bit, until it was hidden under her dress.

“Oh no!”

“That’s alright. Richard, help her.” The assistant manager kneeled down, and Yuna did too, pretended to search. And  _ just like that _ , she made to stand up, pretended to hit her head on the table edge, held the table leg for balance, and sent the rest of the boxes tumbling too.

She didn’t have to look at Javier to know he was starting his work on the safe. The manager was down on his knees quickly, both men Yuna gather up the jewelry; all the while, she apologized profusely. They were probably ready to see the back of her now, despite how much money  _ her husband  _ was depositing in their small town bank.

It took them a few minutes to gather them all up, get everything back in its boxes and into the safe. Javier apologized too, for the mess, for her clumsiness, for everything except for the fact that tomorrow night he would be back to rob them blind.

They were out of there quickly after that, just like Javier promised, taking with them the now empty bag. They walked out onto the street slowly though, arm in arm like before, neither of them daring to speak. It was only when they were practically on the other side of the town, where they had been dropped by the stagecoach yesterday, that Javier stopped, turned to look at her, his voice low. There was a family already waiting for the coach, a mother with her three children, and Yuna and Javier stood to the side, out of hearing distance.

“Good work,” He said, “You’re quick on your feet.”

“What now?”

“Now, you get on the stagecoach and go back to Rhodes. I will be back tomorrow night, or early in the morning the next day. Thank you for your help,” Javier said.

“Go back like this?” She meant the dress, pearls, the shoes and the gloves.

“Sure, why not? It all belongs to Grimshaw, from her glory days. She will probably strip you when you get to camp.”

Yuna heard the stagecoach before she saw it, the driver calling out the stop.

He made a show out of saying goodbye to her after that, loudly wishing her a safe trip home, telling her he’d send her luggage along with the butler (which seemed a bit much). If she had a handkerchief, she would have waived it at him to maximize the dramatics. Instead, she boarded with her bag and they waved to each other until they were out of sight.

Yuna thought of everything that her and Javier spoke about on the journey home.

It wasn’t too different from what other people had told her, their subtle or not-so-subtle suggestions about what she should do about Kenji. It  _ was _ different hearing it from Javier though. She wasn’t sure what made him leave Mexico but his life until then seemed similar to hers; he’d seemed to understand - as much as it was possible to understand - what it meant to be from a place like that and to leave it. He had been able to make a life for himself in a new country and whether or not Yuna agreed with it, or would have chosen it for herself, he valued it. She could tell by how he spoke about “family.”

Their conversation had shifted som ething, something small inside her which she couldn’t make sense of yet. She thought of all that Kenji had done to try to fix things at home and all it had taken for him to decide to leave. He’d been able to imagine a different possibility for himself, one that didn’t include working under the sun until you died. It was something that had always been difficult for Yuna, planning ahead but also accepting any alternative life to the one she was in. Something began to take shape though.

Maybe she would stay, once she found Kenji - not with the gang but she could find work for herself somewhere, maybe in one of the cities. She could meet new people,  _ normal _ people, create something entirely new and different for herself. It was hard to think of though, felt like trying to make sense of someone speaking another language. It would be different maybe once she left Lemoyne, clearer; she sure as hell wasn’t planning on staying down here.

* * *

 

Miss Grimshaw almost did strip her, once Yuna got to camp. She made Yuna stand in her tent, unbuttoned her dress, unbuckled her shoes, took the pearls and complained Yuna had made her gloves “filthy.”  Yuna wondered how Javier had convinced her to let them borrow it in the first place, considering how attached the woman was to it, much less managed to borrow everything from the other women in the camp. Her own clothes felt drab and ugly in comparison once she’d put them back on. It would be nice to have a dress like that someday for her own; she thought of that dream she’d had, the pretty city, that beautiful day, promised herself that if she ever went to a place like that she’d be wearing a dress just like Miss Grimshaw’s.

It was evening so most of the chores had already been completed by the other women. She wasn’t in the mood to mend anyone’s socks, anyway. Music was playing in the camp tonight though the atmosphere was subdued, quiet; Arthur and Mary-Beth were reading together, Uncle was playing his banjo alone by the water, Tilly and Karen were playing cards with Abigail, Mr. Strauss was poring over his accounts. Yuna walked to where Charles was sitting near the fire, attaching feathers to an arrow, and sat across from him. It was the first time she’d sat out here, right in the middle of camp.

He didn’t look up until he had added the arrow to the stack that was already done.

“Hey. How was it?” He meant the job, she assumed.

“It was alright. I wore Miss Grimshaw’s dress.”

“I saw.”

He paused and started on another arrow.

It was alright by her, the silence, she’d spent enough time with him that she was used to it by now, no longer felt the need to try to fill in the gaps. She let herself enjoy the sound and the smell of the fire, though it was far too warm for it tonight. Absently, she watched as Charles continued to work on the rest of the arrows. He’d finished about twenty by the time he looked up again.

“We did a job with Uncle last night,” He said, “Ended up in a burning barn.”

Yuna looked over at where the old man had started singing to himself. “Is everyone alright?”

Charles shrugged, “Everyone’s fine. Last time I go anywhere with him, though.”

“I thought you would might have decided that after you found us in the woods and I almost shot you,” Yuna said.

“I’m a fool,” He laughed a short, gruff laugh. “I went to Rhodes in the morning to get a hot meal and a bath. Picked these up.”

Charles took what looked like an envelope out of his back pocket, walked around the fire to sit next to Yuna. He took the far side of the log, an arm’s length away and handed it over.

For a moment, she thought it might be a letter from her father, but it was far too early to hear back. Inside were the photographs they’d taken in town, two of each. Most of them were no good, particularly the early ones - she was too embarrassed, it was clear on her face, couldn’t hold still and the photographs were blurry. The later ones were fine, though she wished she had been wearing a nicer dress, more like what she’d worn today.

The last one was the one she’d taken with Charles. He was the one who looked embarrassed in these, his mouth quirking in a strange way. It was nice though, better than all the others.

She put the photographs back save for a copy of that last one, passed it over to Charles, though she didn’t know if he would care to save it or not. Charles held it in his hands in a strange way, looked at it for a beat before putting it away, back in his pocket.

“Thank you. That was a lot of fun,” Yuna said.

“Sure. It was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun writing Javier here, I hope I was able to bring something interesting to his character. Thank you as always for everyone's continuing enthusiasm and support with this fic. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all think.


	9. VIIII (Part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discoveries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is explicit, consensual F/M sexual content in this chapter. If that's something that makes you uncomfortable, you can stop reading when the setting shifts to St. Denis and let me know in the comments. I'm happy to summarize what happened, without being explicit.
> 
> I uploaded a version of this chapter a little while ago and took it down. I was hesitating about adding some substantial parts to it and posting it in a few days when I got it done, but I decided to save that for the next chapter. My apologies to anyone who subscribes and gets multiple notifications.

Back home, sex was not as hidden as much as it was in the camp.

Perhaps it was because they had all grown up together, or because there were more people her own age, but on the plantation it was openly discussed, more matter of fact. On Sundays when there was no work and the young people all went down to the beach, couples would kiss out in the open on the shore or go down to the caves for more privacy. It was different for their parents’ generation, sure, and something that was mostly hidden from them, but among Yuna and her friends, it was something  _ expected _ . Yuna’s father was mostly uninterested in what she did outside work, and since Kenji got interested in politics, he was all about the “abolition of marriage” and female suffrage. For Yuna, fooling around was never anything she had put so much thought behind. It was a physical urge, which she satisfied with men who she considered to be her friends but it was not something for her which was necessarily tied to romantic love. 

It never happened in the camp. There were only a couple of instances with Karen and Sean, and Dutch and Molly seemed to spend more time arguing about what  _ wasn’t _ happening between them and doing anything. No one brought strangers back to camp, men or women. Whatever happened, happened in private and away from camp and didn’t seem to happen  _ between _ anyone in the gang.

At night, lying on her bedroll in the humid, sweaty, heat, listening to the sounds on insects, the crackle of the fire, and the indistinguishable voices of the men, the possibility hovered at the edges of Yuna’s mind. Not in any real way, not with any particular man in mind, but as a faceless, nameless desire from which there was no relief. 

It went away in the mornings, mostly. There was a lot going on; the men were almost always gone, mixed up in something with the families in Rhodes, constantly working. There was a new addition too, a strange man that Charles and Arthur brought back to camp.

He was well-dressed, not like how Dutch was, over the top and gaudy, but like a real gentleman, three piece suit and everything. He spoke well too, Yuna could hear him from across camp, like someone educated, someone who went to university; living with the gang these past few months, she had learned not to assume anything about their origins, but this man in particular stood out. She watched from near the water as he teased Miss Grimshaw, made a crow appear as though from out of nowhere (hidden up his sleeve perhaps?  _ But how long could he keep a crow up there? _ ).

Charles came to find her after some time. He found a place on the ground to sit beside her, silent for a while, in a way that reminded her of that first day at Horseshoe Overlook when he took her down to the river. It didn’t bother her now; she continued to scrub while she waited for him to say what he had to say.

“Trelawny, that man there,” He motioned with his head to where the well-dressed gentleman was setting up his bedroll. “He says there are bounty hunters after us, at the state lines. In a few months we’ll have to move again. You should know.”

Yuna had figured as much; she had her own bounty poster in Valentine, she hadn’t forgotten about that, and that was just because the police suspected she had information about the gang. They already had to move camp once, she expected they would again but by then she hoped she would be ready to go to a city.

“Are they looking for you?” Yuna asked.

“It’s enough that I’ve been running with them.” He paused to light a cigarette. “It might be worth talking to him about your brother. He’s a strange feller but he does his bit of travelling around, he might know something.”

It was worth a shot, she would keep that in mind.

“Charles, have you ever lived in a city?”

The question came to her mind suddenly; it was the first time she’d called him by his first name too. She hadn’t planned on talking to him about this, but there was no one else she felt she could share this with. Maybe Javier, he was the one who had planted the idea in her head to begin with, but it was different with him. The job had gone well, he’d given her her share and told her he was planning to hit a few more banks in the area, but he didn’t teach her, not really. He just told her what to do and she did it. Charles was different.

“I’ve passed through a few but never hung around too long.”

She thought of how much she wanted to say. “I was wondering what it would be like to stay here.” He gave her a look she couldn’t figure out. “Not  _ here _ , in the camp but in a city maybe. I could find work.”  _ Have a normal life _ , she wanted to say. She couldn’t imagine what it might be. Her own room, her own things - a dress, a new pair of shoes, friends, someone to sleep beside.

“I don’t know too much about city life,” Charles admitted. “But it ain’t easy, living on your own. It ain’t always safe either, but the women can talk to you about that better than me.” He put his cigarette out in the wet mud. “You need to have your own horse. Even in the city. It’ll cost you some to stable it but it’s better than relying on someone to get you around.”

“How much does a horse cost?”

“It depends on the horse.”

Yuna had been avoiding having to really learn, but it was a good idea. It would make her safer maybe, even while she lived with the gang. If something were to happen and she had to get out, or there was somewhere she needed to be but Charles wasn’t around to ask for a ride, it would be good for her to rely on herself.

“Do you have time to take me?"

* * *

 

Charles did all the talking at the stables and Yuna was grateful for that. Though he tried to explain what they were looking for, what traits the different breeds had, it mostly went over her head. In the end, he picked out something called a Kentucky Saddler for her, black with a bit of white on his muzzle. With the saddle and some food, it all came out to $75.

He took some time for himself after her business was settled to pick out a blanket for Taima, get her bathed and have her hooves trimmed. Yuna went to the general store in the meantime; she had decided, as he stood talking to the stable owner, to do something nice for him, as a way to say thank you. He’d helped her a lot since she started living with him and she didn’t want to him to feel like she was taking advantage of his kindness. That almost made her laugh, the idea that  _ she _ could take advantage him. 

She bought him a pack of cigarettes, got some fresh fruit too, a couple of peaches and an orange, and a candy bar. A book seemed like a good idea, but she couldn’t remember whether she’d ever seen him read or not and she wasn’t much of a reader herself to be able to pick a good one out. There was a gun shop in town but she didn’t want to go in there alone and besides, it felt somehow rude to buy him bullets or gun oil or whatever else. It felt as though it would be saying there was nothing more to him than that.

They rode together for much of the rest of the morning, despite the heat. When Charles rode ahead of her, Yuna could see how his shirt clung to his body in the places where he was sweating, but he didn’t complain or try to cut their ride short. Instead, he gave her riding tips, patient as ever.

After a couple of hours, Yuna asked for a break; though their pace was almost glacial, she was already getting sore. Charles had her follow him off the road to the edge of a thinly wooded area where they hitched the horses and sat under the sparse shade.

“Can I ride with you on the way back?” Yuna asked. It was a pathetic, embarrassing question but she didn’t feel like she had to censor himself around him.

Charles smiled, “The only way to get used to the pain is to ride through it.” He unbuttoned the top of his shirt and, pouring some water on his hands from his canteen, rubbed it on his neck and collar. “Your horse needs a name.”

Yuna looked over at where the horse was nuzzling Taima, who took a few steps away from him. Maybe it was because she hadn’t grown up around horses, but she didn’t feel the affinity for them that everyone else seemed to in the camp. Perhaps if it came down to it and she depended on the horse for her life, the way the gang did, she would feel that bond to him too. 

“Maybe I have to get to know him first,” Yuna decided. She remembered the things she’d brought for Charles, which she’d put in the saddlebag. “Wait a second.” She went up to her as yet nameless horse and brought the presents down in the bag that the grocer had given her, handing it to Charles and sitting back beside him.

“This is for you,” She explained, “To say thank you.”

Charles looked in the bag, gave her one of the peaches and took one for himself. His expression was unreadable. “You didn’t have to.”

Yuna finished hers first - it was sweet and almost ripe, though it had gotten warm during their ride. Seemingly lost in thought, Charles ate slow, looking out in the direction of the way they came, though he didn’t seem to be searching for anything in particular. 

She thought back again to the first day she’d seen him when he was with the others outside the saloon in Valentine. She’d thought he was handsome then, but given everything that had happened afterwards, hadn’t given that much attention since then. Now, though, sitting in the heat with him, watching him eat his peach and thinking of how he’d helped her, she saw it again. 

He was different from all of the men she’d been attracted to before, although in retrospect they seemed more like boys. It wasn’t just how he looked, his broad shoulders, the stubble on his face; it was the way he carried himself too, his self-assurance. One night, when she’d been helping Mr. Pearson and Sadie clean the dishes, she’d heard him speaking to the other men by the fire of how he felt as though he didn’t understand why he was a part of this world. Arthur responded to say that Charles was the best man he knew. It had surprised Yuna when she’d heard it - the two men were friends, sure, but she’d never heard Arthur talk that way to anyone else. Charles had certainly been good to her when he didn’t have to be. It seemed like something that came easy to him.

She let herself daydream a bit about it, imagined taking him home to Hawaii,imagined being on that beach with him, tried to think of what _ he _ might think of it;  _ does he know how to swim?  _ she wondered. Probably he did, since he was so good at everything else. They wouldn’t have to stay on the plantation, they could go anywhere, explore the island together. It was a crazy thought, an impossibility, but she was surprised by how happy it made her. Not just happy, but warm all over and not just from the heat of the day. 

Yuna wondered what it meant that she could think about him this way now, even if it was just a thought, when a few months ago she’d been terrified even of eye contact.

With his hands, Charles dug a small hole in the ground and buried his peach pit. Yuna added her own and he covered them both with dirt.

“Who taught you how to do so much?” Yuna asked finally. 

“I learned to hunt from my mother’s people. By the time we left I knew how to use a bow and how to hunt and track. I picked up some living on the run with my parents, and the rest on my own.” He turned to look at her, and she could see his eyes had flecks of gold in them. “Moving to a city is a good idea for you.”

Yuna laughed, “Why? Because I’m useless living out here?”

“I didn’t say that. But living this type of way changes people.” 

She wanted to ask how it had changed him, but that was something which might hurt him to speak about. Maybe for someone like him, who had always lived that way, there was no before, no change and no choice.

“Maybe you can give it a shot too, living in a city I mean. I’m sure you can find work, you’re good at everything else, and if you don’t like it, you can just go back to this,” Yuna said.  _ This  _ was loaded, meant everything that came with living in the gang.

“I’ve been on my own most of my life. I’m done with that.”

“You can make new friends...” She stopped when Charles started smiling, a smile that he tried to suppress. “What?”

“Nothing. You seem so young sometimes is all. How old are you?”

“I’ll be 19 soon. Why? You weren’t young when you were my age?” Yuna teased.

Charles laughed, “You don’t want to know what I was like at your age.”

“I’m just saying you could give it a try. It might be a nice sort of life. It wouldn’t be so dangerous and you could even have a room with a door instead of sleeping next to Javier every night. It would probably be boring but boring can be good. My whole life up until now was boring.”

“Someday, maybe,” He conceded, after a short silence. “I don’t know if I would want to live in a city. A smaller town would suit me better, somewhere in the north, where I could go into the mountains when I wanted to.”

That  _ did _ seem to suit him better, when she thought about it. Somehow the image of him caged in by people and buildings and roads didn’t quite work; a cabin outside of town, surrounded by snow with a lake nearby maybe, made much more sense. More sense that running around with a gun.

“How do you feel?” Charles asked. His eyes flickered to her body for a second, and flickered away just as quickly.

“Sore, but better.”

“Are you ready to leave?”

Yuna didn’t but they couldn’t stay under that tree forever. “Sure.” 

Charles got up first, buttoned his shirt back up again, and reached a hand out to her. She took it and rose slowly, clumsily, her thighs burning as she straightened her legs out. Charles unhitched their horses, and handed Yuna the reins to her own. It seemed as though he could read her mind, though; he stood beside her horse and let her use his body for support to climb on. With one hand on his shoulder, it was easier to push up on the stirrups and throw her leg over the staddle. 

“Can we go to Rhodes first?” Yuna asked, “I want to see if I got a letter.”

“I’m in no rush,” Charles said, mounting Taima.

They went out to the road, though every muscle in Yuna’s body ached and though for once, she wanted nothing but to go back to camp and lie down, if Miss Grimshaw would let her. It wasn’t very far, only about an hour, but when they arrived outside the post office, she practically fell into Charles’ lap when he helped her get off her horse. 

He waited outside for her.

She had mailed the letter using only her first initial and her last name. If anyone in the camp found out, they would say she wasn’t being careful enough, but if she’d used any other name, the letter would have never gotten to her father. It had contained no details about where she was staying or what she had been up to; just that she was still traveling and looking for her brother.

There  _ was _ a letter for her. It surprised her, it seemed too soon, and there was something about holding it in her hands once she’d paid the clerk the $10 for the postage that upset her, felt heavy. It took her back to Hawaii, to Sunday mornings when the mail was distributed; those who couldn’t read and write would try to find someone who could, though all the young people wanted to do was run off together. She wondered who her father had asked to write this for him now that her and Kenji were gone.

She found herself going outside to where Charles stood leaning against the side of the building, and didn’t know why she did it. It was something private for her as far as there was anything she had for her own, save for the gold and the lotus Charles had given her. To his credit, he didn’t try to peek over her shoulder, wasn’t impatient to read the contents.  _ Or maybe he just doesn’t care _ .

It was short. Her father was a man of few words but it disappointed her nonetheless; there was no comfort, no words of love. She reminded herself that he’d had someone write it for him. 

_ Yuna -- _

_ Speak to Akira Ito. 75 Jackson Square, St. Denis. Everything here is good. _

She handed the letter to Charles, who read it quickly, folded it back up, and gave it to her.

“Who is that?” He asked.

“Akira? She grew up with us but she’s been gone for 10 years.” Yuna was young when Akira had left but she remembered her as beautiful and freckled and always laughing. Her younger brother Genta had been friends with them, was still in Hawaii as far as Yuna knew.  She hadn’t thought of her in years.

“Do you think it’s worthwhile?”

“It might be nice to see someone from home,” Yuna admitted. She wasn’t going to pretend like that didn’t matter to her, not if she was going to ask him to take him. “And she might be able to help.” Maybe she’d run into Kenji somehow. Or maybe she could find Yuna work.

“It’s at least a three hour ride,” Charles explained. He rubbed the stubble on his face, as though it itched, or perhaps that’s what he did where he was thinking. “I figure you won’t want to wait?” Yuna shook her head. “Can you handle the ride?”   


“You said to ride through it, right?”

“I did. But it’ll be hard to ride there. Your horse riding skills are better suited to the open road,” Charles smiled a little at his own joke.

They ended up stabling her horse in Rhodes and riding together on Taima, the poor thing. Though Yuna’s core burned, it was much easier to let Charles do all of the work and just hold on to him. The further they rode, the more she let herself rest her body weight on his back, despite the dampness of his shirt. It was nice, she could admit that much to herself at least, to be close to a man even if it was just riding behind him side saddle on his horse. 

It was a beautiful ride. The air seemed to get thicker as they nearer the city but it didn’t bother her; it was like entering a different world, one that was lush and green like home, but surrounded by swamps, with scummy water and moss covering every tree and branch. A couple of times, Charles pointed out where there were frogs sitting in the mud. The alligators were farther off, he explained, but there were people down here that hunted and ate them. 

They saw the city from far off, though it was another thirty minutes before they got there. Large chimneys loomed on the outskirts, seeping black smoke that was so thick Charles covered his nose and mouth in his sleeve, and Yuna put hers against his back. Once they passed that neighborhood, there was nothing but large, tree-lined boulevards, cobblestone underneath that made beautiful sounds when Taima walked on it, men and women walking around that looked more like that Mr. Trelawney than anyone else. There were trams with bells that made a lovely sound, and streetlights, that had been turned on now that it was dark.

Charles slowed his horse near a policeman who stood patrolling a street corner in a smart blue suit.

“Excuse me. How can I get to 75 Jackson Square?” Charles asked.

The policeman smirked, “Go down half a mile, north at the park. You’ll know it when you see it, cowpoke.”

“Sure, thanks.” He led Taima onwards, though Yuna could feel tension in the muscles of his back.

They arrived finally to a massive square, with a statue of a general in the middle surrounded by a garden where men and women walked arm in arm. They were dressed even finer here, the women wearing gowns with large bustles, the men all in tophats. Yuna and Charles probably stood out even more here, but it didn’t matter to her. She had no ambitions about being someone she wasn’t.

“Your friend must have done well for herself,” Charles said. Yuna slid closer to him so she could hear him better, held on tight to his waist. He was looking for the house numbers; all of them were large, colorful, gated.

“Maybe she got married,” Yuna speculated.

They’d stopped outside one of the houses, but Charles didn’t make a move to dismount. From the outside, it seemed identical to the others, but he was looking at something that she couldn’t see. 

“What is it?” She finally asked.

“This is a whorehouse.”

“A what?”

“See how there’s two doors? The front door is closed, but there’s a guard standing at the side and two men have already gone through that way,” Charles explained.

Yuna had no frame of reference to figure out whether he was right or wrong, and couldn’t help but wonder for a moment how many of these types of places Charles had been in. It bothered her, though she chalked that up to the realization that this is where someone from home had ended up. It was nice though, finer than any house Yuna had ever seen before; she’d imagined a whorehouse would be something dark and grimy.

“Come on, we’ve come this far,” Charles said, “Let’s see if they’ll let us in.”

They dismounted, hitched Taima within the gates of the house and from there Yuna followed Charles’ lead. He seemed to hesitate for a moment, trying to decide which door to take, but ended up deciding on the side. A well-dressed man stood guard, as Charles had spotted, but with him was a young girl Yuna’s age, a maid probably, holding a tray with glasses of some kind of liquor in them.

“Name?” The guard asked.

Charles looked over at Yuna. “We’re here to see someone. A Japanese woman.” Yuna realized Akira might have changed her name, and didn’t want to give it just in case. The guard was unmoved. “You can tell her Yuna Kuwano is here. We grew up together.”

“Wait here a moment.” He went through the door; for the few seconds before he closed it, music came from inside, the sound of people laughing. He emerged a few moments later and snapped his fingers at them, “Come.” They followed him around the back of the house to another door that lead them into an empty kitchen. “Wait,” He said and left, back to his post.

Charles and Yuna stood awkwardly around the kitchen table. They could hear it better from here, the sound of the clinking of glasses and the chatter of men and women. 

“Are you alright?” Charles asked.

“I’ve never been anywhere like this before,” Yuna admitted, though that probably didn’t come as a surprise to him. “It’s so grand.”

“It is.” He would say no more than that; he wasn’t about to share his own experiences in whorehourses, that much was for sure. 

Akira emerged from the door that lead inside the house. She was as she’d been when she lived in Hawaii, at least how Yuna remembered her, pretty and dazzling. There was no difference between her and the well-dressed ladies that were walking around the city; she wore a silk blue dress with lace trimming along the sleeves and the collar, a blue ribbon cinching her waist and jewelry, what looked like diamonds, dripping from her ears and her neck and her arms. She looked like a princess.

“Yuna?” She asked. Akira looked at her closely, as though trying to match Yuna with the nine-year old girl she had been when Akira left.

“Yes, it’s me. You look so, so... wonderful,” Yuna said.

Akira smiled, no longer unsure, and stepped forward to embrace Yuna. Though they had never been close, it felt so good to be held by someone from home, someone who shared at least some memories with her of home and all the people who they knew there. 

“And who’s this?” Akira asked, pulling away and looking at Charles. “Your husband?”

“Charles Smith,” He held out his hand and Akira shook it.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Akira said, and seemed to mean it. “But this is my busy time. You can stay here, as my guests. I’ll have dinner brought up to you. We can talk over breakfast tomorrow.”

Yuna would have said yes, instantly, but Charles gave her a look she couldn’t read. Akira seemed to understand it though.

“This is  _ my _ house,” Akira said. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Come on, I’ll take you up.” 

Charles seemed like he wanted to say something, but didn’t.

She led them not into the heart of the house but through a staircase that came up through the side of the kitchen. Yuna had never been in a house like this but she understand that this was the servants’ staircase, could tell by the cracked white tiles. They went up three flights before they were finally let into the house. The third floor was just one big hallway with numbered doors all the way down. If Yuna hadn’t seen that, she might have believed this was just a rich woman’s home, but it was clear now.

Akira unlocked their room for them - “lucky number seven,” she said with a smile as she opened it. It was beautiful, like everything else here. The biggest bed Yuna had ever seen took up most of the room, but there was a piano in there too, a table with a vase of fresh flowers, and a smaller room, through which she could see a bathtub and a toilet. She’d never lived anywhere with indoor plumbing. A window was open and the air smelled crisp and clean, overlooking the park in the center of the square.

“I’ll have someone bring up dinner,” Akira repeated. She took Yuna’s hands, squeezed them. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll speak to you tomorrow?”

“Sure. Thank you,” Yuna said. “For the room and the dinner. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Yes, thank you,” Charles said. 

Akira smiled, a pretty smile, and left them, closing the door behind her. It was a lot to take in and perhaps it would have been more difficult to swallow had it not been for everything else that had happened to her the last few months. Akira may be living in a whorehouse, but Yuna had been living with outlaws, had helped rob a stagecoach and a bank and would likely do much more but she finally settled down. She didn’t know whether she could tell Akira that though; she supposed Charles would have to be a part of that decision, since it involved him and the rest of the gang just as much as her.

“Yuna.” It was the first time he’d used her name, maybe, Yuna couldn’t remember if he ever had before. As he spoke, he took his guns out of the holster and placed them on the table. “I think your friend is a madam. Do you know what that is?” She shook her head. “All of the girls in this house work for her. She charges them for the food, their clothes, the rooms. Everything. And she gets a cut out of all the money they make here.”

“Like Dutch?” She’d meant to tease, but Charles was serious.

“Sure, maybe. Maybe it’s a family here too but it’s not always like that. Some of these girls get trapped, they can’t ever earn enough to leave,” He explained. 

Yuna frowned, “I don’t think she’s like that. I was friends with her brother. Her mother used to make dresses for me.”

“I might be wrong,” Charles conceded, “But I want you to know that sometimes that’s how life is in this country. She might ask you to stay, and you should think about what you want to say to that.”

It made sense now why he’d hesitated in the kitchen when Akira made her offer. 

“I would say no.” Yuna was sure of that.

Charles shrugged as though to say,  _ that’s up to you _ . But if he was so indifferent then why had he bothered to warn her?

“I’m going to take a bath. Or do you want to go first?” Yuna asked. She didn’t want to deflect, but it was something to deal with tomorrow.

“Go ahead. I’ll be out here.”

Yuna went through to the bathroom. It took her awhile just to figure out how to get the water to run in the bathtub, but the heat of it felt good on her aching muscles. There were bottles sitting on a stool and she smelled and used them all, though she wasn’t sure what they were for. They smelled nice though, made her skin feel clean and silky. Yuna only got out once the water had grown cold, dried herself herself with one of the softest towels she’d ever touched which hung behind the door. 

It felt like it was making her dirty all over again to put her own dress back on, but she did and finally walked out to the bedroom. Charles was smoking by the window and in her absence, someone had brought up their dinner, fresh vegetables in sauce with what smelled like grilled fish; Charles had already eaten his share. On the bed, they’d laid out a long, white cotton nightgown for her and a pair of fine looking silk men’s pajamas for Charles.

He didn’t notice her at first, or perhaps was lost in thought looking out into the park, but it gave her a moment to watch him. When she didn’t know him as well, she would wonder sometimes what was on his mind but she’d learned now that he would tell her, if she just asked. 

“Thank you for everything, Charles,” Yuna said. “You helped me on my first day, and you went with me to Rhodes and took that picture with me. And now this. I’d like to repay you someday, but I don’t know how.”

“You don’t have to repay me,” He said. Javier would have said something about family and looking out for each other but Charles didn’t. “It’s the right thing to do. I would do it for anyone.”

She thought about that as he went in to take his bath. The only person who he seemed to spend any substantial amount of time with was Arthur, but other than that, he kept mostly to himself. Even Hosea, who seemed to be a father figure for many of the people in the camp, didn’t seem to have a particularly close relationship with Charles. They respected each other, sure, same with Charles and Dutch, but beyond that, Yuna hadn’t seen more warmth between them. 

Yuna ate her dinner and wondered whether Charles would be here if one of the other women had asked him, Karen or Mary-Beth, even Abigail. Somehow, she doubted it, but she didn’t know why - maybe because the other women were capable, he wouldn’t  _ have _ to help them as much. If they needed a horse, they were just as likely to steal it. For someone who seemed to thrive on being alone, however, he didn’t seem to mind spending time with her even when it took him far off from his own plans. 

She’d thought he was handsome, still did; perhaps he was attracted to her, and that was part of it. The thought hadn’t crossed her mind before but as she changed into the nightgown and got into bed, it started to take shape. If she stripped everything away from it, the circumstances of how she got into the gang, the way he made his living, the way they both lived now, it became clearer. He wasn’t driven to help her just by that, this attraction or affection or whatever it could be called; that wasn’t enough, and he would have tried to something by now, to kiss her maybe. He  _ was _ kind, that was the other part of it which brought it into focus and made sense. He was a good man, like Arthur Morgan had said, and he did all of this not to win her or seduce her but without any expectations at all.

Yuna tried to seperate the feelings that were growing in her now from the desire for physical intimacy. It  _ was _ hard to seperate, particularly now as she lay in the dark in the big bed alone, her skin soft and clean; she could hear the sounds of the street through the window but there was also louder music coming from inside the house now, as well as the muffling sound of lovemaking from the rooms around them, as though to remind her where they were sleeping tonight. She tried to imagine it was another man, think of if it was Javier or Arthur or someone else she found handsome in the next room; if it was them though, she wouldn’t feel this way at all. She would be grateful to them, sure, but it wouldn’t extend to this sort of longing which mixed sex with sentiment.

Charles’ bath lasted about as long as hers and he came out dressed save for his shoes, drying his hair with a towel. 

“I’ll take the floor,” He offered.

“No, it’s fine, it’s a big bed.” 

He didn’t hesitate or falter, simply walked over to the empty side of the bed, put the pajamas on a nearby chair and got under the thin blanket beside her, in his own clothes. They could have fit another person in the gap between them. 

Yuna reached for his hand where it lay at his side, put her hand on top of his. It was an insane move; why was she doing this? It was a safe move; if she got him wrong, all he would have to do was just pull away. He didn’t though, didn’t really move at all. She was too anxious to look at him but she forced herself to turn on her side nonetheless, to face him, it was the least that she could do; he did the same, and they lay like that for a few moments, her hand on his, looking at each other in the dark. 

Finally, she inched closer and closed the gap between them. Yuna knew she was here, that this was no daydream, but at the same time it felt a little like it was, like she was standing on the outside looking in, like she was trying to focus the way you do when trying to drive a dream towards a particular ending.

“What are you doing?” Charles asked, his tone flat.

She might have answered with a kiss but that didn’t feel right, he should have the chance to say no if he didn’t want this.  _ Do I want it?  _ The answer was yes, but it terrified her that it was. 

“I don’t know. I was going to kiss you,” She said. It felt more embarrassing to admit than it would have to just kiss him.  _ God, I’m an idiot. _ “Can I?”

“Yes.”

It was far from the spontaneous embraces of her girlhood, the sneaking around and the giggling. Maybe it was better to do things this way. She leaned forward and they met halfway, pressing their lips together. Yuna would have melted into the mattress right then, if she could. It had been a year, maybe longer, since she’d last been kissed and never like this, where she could feel a man’s scratchy stubble against her face. He was a patient kisser, like he was patient about everything else, and it felt like an eternity of soft, small kisses before he opened his mouth and she could then do the same. 

Every move was a careful negotiation, both of them holding back and waiting for the other to reach out first. Yuna touched his face, put a hand on his cheek; he returned the gesture by putting his hand on her arm and as she moved her body even closer against his, his hand came to rest on the back of her neck, where he played her hair with soft, slow motions. She wanted more but didn’t know what exactly, and didn’t dare ask for it.

He pulled away after what felt like a blissful eternity.

“Only if you’re sure,” Charles said. 

It felt like a response to a question that she hadn’t asked. Maybe he felt dreamy too. 

“I’m sure. Are you?” 

“I’m sure.” 

They kissed again and it didn’t feel like such an experiment this time. It felt like it was leading somewhere, to something. She mirrored his movements and put her hand in his hand, pulled it away from his face; she hadn’t realized it was something she wanted to do until she did it, though now she didn’t want to let go. In the morning he might not want her to touch it anymore, it might be strange and tense or she might wake up and realize this never had happened at all, but for now at least she could.

In the meantime, his hand went down to her waist, pulled at her nightgown until his hand rested on the naked skin of her thigh.  _ How many women had he done this with before?  _ It shouldn’t have mattered but it did, somehow, though it was childish and ridiculous to feel any ownership over his past. 

Slowly, carefully, he moved his hand further down her thigh, pulled it up and close so it rested on his leg. She hoped he would touch her,  _ wished _ he would but he did something better instead; in one move, he rolled her on back, and settled in between her thighs. He pressed his erection against her but broke their kiss to look at her face, to see if she wanted to object. She didn’t, answered his unasked question by rocking her hips against his and then his lips were back on her.

They grinded against each other like teenagers and it was heaven. It was no longer a negotiation but something more desperate and wanton now. Yuna put her hands under his shirt and caressed the skin of his back; when she experimented with scratching him, softly, not enough to break the skin, he dropped his mouth down to her neck, kissed and sucked and nipped.

They added their own sounds to the cacophony of moans in the rooms of the whorehouse around them. 

It got to be too much, the friction, the feel of her sensitive skin against the fabric of his pants. There were other things she wanted to do, things she wanted him to do  _ to her _ , but it seemed urgent now to get relief. She reached down between them and touched the front of his pants; he bucked against her when she palmed his erection with her hands, groaned into her ear, and that sound spurred her on, led her to unbutton his pants, reach into his underwear and pull his cock out. It was smooth in his hand but thick, big enough that she doubted whether it would fit inside her.

He pulled himself up on his elbows and pulled himself up again, giving her that same questioning look, his hair falling like a curtain between them. “I’m sure,” Yuna whispered, “But help me.”

“Help you with what?”

“To put it in.”

There was probably a more seductive way to say that, something more adult, but Charles smiled, reached down between them, held his cock and began to slide it up and down, against Yuna’s wet skin. She moved against him, in her desperation trying to move him towards where her need felt most urgent, but Charles took his time, like he did with everything else. When he finally positioned himself against her opening, he sunk into her slowly.

She thought of Tilly’s question, those first days in the camp when she’d asked where Yuna had ever been with a man. Yuna was unsure then but she was certain now; she’d never done anything that felt remotely like this.  _ Is this really happening?  _ Better him that some stranger she didn’t want. Better him than the Irish man she’d met at those oil fields who she could have walked with and had. Better him even then the boys of her girlhood.

It hurt, a kind of pain she’d never really felt before, hot and stretching. Charles’ thrust were too fast, too hard.

“Charles, slow down.”

“Sorry. Do you want me to stop?”

“No, just slow.”

He did, lowered himself down so they were almost chest to chest, buried his face in the crook of her neck. Charles moved against her in more of a grinding motion now; it took her some time to adjust, but it was better now, and the feel of friction of his skin and hair against her felt good. Not as good as when they were just rubbing against each other before, at least not at first, but different.

Slowly, Yuna began to move her hips up to meet his, testing how it felt when she moved her legs, pulled them up and crossed them over his own, like a hug. He seemed to like it too, his hand slipped down to her thigh again and pulled her close, though he still hid her face from her.

“Charles. Look at me.”

Obeying, he lifted his head, took a deep breath, and pressed his forehead against hers. She wanted to tell him he was beautiful; it was the first word that came to her mind, and it was true for him, the look on his face, soft and a little stunned. 

“Show me what you want,” he said.

He held himself still inside her, above her, and Yuna took the lead, thrusting up to meet him. It didn’t take long to find the right pace, the right spot. “Like this,” she said, and Charles began to move  _ with _ her, not against her, one fluid euphoric motion.

They kissed, wet kisses that were interrupted by moans, and her orgasm that came on too quickly. It wracked her entire body all the way down to her toes, had her thighs shaking and twitching, as she squeezed herself around him. Charles pulled out of her almost instantly, let out a few ragged breaths and came between her legs, all warm and wet.

He rolled over on his back beside her. Neither of them made any move to cover themselves; there was something intimate in that, lying side by side, practically bare from the waist down, legs spread, recovering. Looking at him like that, Yuna felt suddenly embarrassed at what they’d done and he got up, as though he felt it, with his pants low on his waist still, and grabbed the towel he’d used for his hair. He gave it to Yuna, who wiped herself and the bed carefully, before he cleaned himself up, threw the towel in the bathroom and pulled his pants back up.

Finally, Charles settled back into bed beside her. He lay closer to her this time and when she rolled on her side to face him, he took her hand and placed it on his chest, though she would have preferred if he hadn’t. It felt like a flash of lightning, what they’d just done, something that came out of nowhere, loud and fast, and it left her shaken. A familiar panicked feeling rattled her brain; she snaked her hand through his shirt to touch his chest and focusing on the rhythm of his heart helped calm her.

“There was blood,” He said. “I didn’t know you hadn’t done that before.” 

“You were great,” Yuna offered, clumsily, embarrassed. Charles scoffed. “I mean it. I’m glad it happened now, with you.” 

“In a whorehouse?” He asked, unconvinced. “With a criminal?”

“I don’t think of you like that.”

It was a slip in her judgement, maybe, the awareness she tried to maintain about who she was living with, who she’d now slept with. Her recollection of the morning when she’d learned of the two men he’d killed in the mountains had faded; there were others that loomed larger now, like tonight’s. The memories all lay clustered on top of each other and she would have to sort them out but the word “criminal” wasn’t part of that reckoning.

“I’m glad it happened like this,” Yuna repeated, for him and for herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this fic, I decided to write Charles as sexually experienced but that experience has been limited to paid sex workers. I decided to imagine that his expertise is limited by that, which maybe comes across in this interaction with Yuna.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to kudo, subscribe and comment. Particularly to my commenters, thank you so much. It means a lot and is deeply inspiring when you take the time to let me know what you think. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this complicated chapter.


	10. VIIII (Part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A shorter one this time around.

“My mother wrote me a week ago and said you were here. Your father must have told her.” Even at breakfast, Akira didn’t look anything like the farmgirl she’d been. She was dressed like she was about to attend a ball, and maybe she was, in a lush blue gown with matching blue sapphire jewelry, her black hair curled and falling smoothly down to her waist. Even her movements were refined, the way she held her teacup as she drank, used her knife and fork to eat her pastry. “But I thought you were in New Hanover?”

“I was but Kenji hadn’t been there in months, I think. And then I met Charles and we’ve been traveling together since then,” Yuna lied, though there was some truth there too. 

That was what her and Charles had agreed to say this morning, before they’d been brought down to see Akira. It was too dangerous to admit otherwise, and unnecessary too; if Akira thought she was married or that they were lovers or whatever else, it was safer than her knowing that the Van Der Linde gang was only a half day’s ride away. 

That was all they’d talked about that morning, nothing about the night before. Yuna had considered bringing it up but what was there to say? They got dressed in front of each other, which was new, a sort of tacit acknowledgement of what had happened, but she hadn’t tried to look at him as he changed, and she didn’t feel his eyes on her either.

“I saw him a month ago,” Akira said, her tone casual, betraying no investment or genuine interest in the topic. 

Yuna felt as though someone had put their fist in her stomach, grabbed up part of her and began to squeeze. Her and Charles’ breakfast and tea lay untouched in front of her. She was glad she hadn’t taken a bite, or she might have vomited it up.

“Where? Here?”

Akira nodded, “I don’t think he knows you’re looking for him or that you’re even here. I was surprised to see him too. He was just  _ there _ at the train station when I went to get Genta. They’re in Chicago, or  _ going _ to Chicago or doing interviews before they get to Chicago.”  She furrowed her brow, as though trying to remember the conversation. “It’s all for that journal. They mailed me a copy, I can find it for you. ‘Liberty,’ or ‘Freedom.’ Kenji’s been writing for them and finding work for Genta too. Can you believe that? Two little boys born in Japan are going to be  _ writing _ for an American newspaper.”

So he was alive. Yuna might have cried, if she was alone. She could have jumped out of the chair, jumped up and down for joy, hugged Akira and hugged Charles. 

Instead, she only turned him. “Have you ever heard of that?” 

Charles shook his head.

“It’s something political,” Akira explained. She paused to take a bite out of her food, opening her mouth carefully so she wouldn’t mess her rouge. “Anarchist, or communist, or communist anarchist.” She laughed. “They told me about it but I don’t think I really understood a word they said. They want to be revolutionaries.” 

There was a playful glint in her eyes, as though it was something she’d teased them about. Yuna couldn’t imagine that Kenji would have liked that teasing; the way he talked about his beliefs, it seemed like a matter of life and death.

“Did they leave an address?” Yuna asked.

“No, but they’re coming back. They didn’t say when, but Kenji looked like he’s been on the road for a while. He looked so good, though, Yuna, handsome, all in black like an actor or a poet. Or a  _ revolutionary _ . You two look so much alike, it’s distracting,” Akira grinned, even as she lifted the teacup to her mouth for a sip. She turned to direct her comment at Charles, “The twin thing always scared me, even when they were little. When they ran through the fields together, playing in the morning, I always thought they looked like two little ghosts.”

Charles looked at Yuna funny, a half-smile playing on his lips. She’d never told him that her and Kenji were twins. 

“Can I leave something with you here, for him, for when they come back?” Yuna asked. “A note maybe. I just want him to know that I’m here, if he needs anything. Or maybe you can just tell him to write to our father.”

“If you leave an address, I can give it to him but he won’t write to you. I’m not even supposed to tell anyone he was here. He’s underground or undercover, I don’t know and I didn’t ask. I can’t have that kind of attention here, it’s enough dealing with the police as is,” Akira explained. “Leave it to your brother to get caught up in that shit.”

The obscenity was strange coming from her mouth, with the way she was dressed and made up, but even with this, Akira had a way to make it charming.

“We’re staying near Rhodes,” Charles said. He thought Yuna would put her foot in it, probably, and give away where the camp was. As if she even knew. “Maybe you can send one of your girls to the post office if he comes by to leave a note. We can pay.”

Akira motioned with her hand, as though to wave the prospect away, “It’s not a problem. I’ll have to ask him first when he comes. He’ll be so happy to see you, Yuna. I can’t wait to tell him you’re married.”

_ Oh, that _ . They’d never said they were married but neither of them had corrected Akira last night when she assumed. Yuna hoped her face didn’t give away her embarrassment. Pretending to be Javier’s wife was a game, silly, ludicrous and Javier had barely so much as touched her. With Charles, it felt revealing somehow, given what happened the night before, more terrifying than being naked in front of him.

“I haven’t really told anyone from home about that yet. I wanted to wait until I found Kenji and we could write to my father together,” Yuna lied.

Akira seemed to catch Yuna’s lie, or suspect something. There was a missed beat in the conversation, a pursing of her lips, something subtle but it was gone quickly, replaced by a smile. “Of course, you have my word.”

“And thank you, for everything, really. But we should go. Charles has to go to work,” Yuna said. It was true, sort of, though she wasn’t about to get into what kind of work Charles was in. She didn’t want to stay here and lie more and get caught out for it.

Charles stood up almost instantly, as though relieved they were leaving. Yuna followed but Akira reached out her hands from where she sat, forcing Yuna to go around the table to hold them. It was a ridiculous gesture, like she was a duchess saying farewell to her subjects, but Yuna was grateful for everything, she couldn’t deny it. Despite that whole mess about Kenji being underground, whatever that meant, she felt like she was walking on air.

“Come by anytime. I mean it, really. It’s good to see someone from home,” Akira said. “And listen. My mother thinks I’m married, too. If you write to your father, you won’t say anything, will you?”

Yuna shook her head. They all something they were lying about something. “I won’t, don’t worry. I’ll see you soon, alright?”

“Yes. With Kenji and Genta. Just like home.”

* * *

 

Charles didn’t speak to her until they were in Rhodes, not really, not anything substantial at least.  Even though they’d eaten in the city before they left, Yuna hadn’t noticed anything was wrong. Perhaps that was selfish with her; she was too much in her own head, thinking of what to write to her father. 

Her thoughts didn’t have the nervous energy to them, the panicked rattling, like they had before she found out that he was alive. It would be feel good to write to her father, let him know at least that, maybe about Akira too, that she’d seen Kenji, but she couldn’t think her way around it. There was something going on which she didn’t understand, some reason he hadn’t written and Akira said he wouldn’t. To write anything to her father might mean to jeopardize them. 

She felt relief too, in a way that was uncomfortable for her to admit. Not just relief that Kenji was okay, though there was plenty of that, but that she was close to being free,  _ really _ free, get to start her own life. 

It was only when they arrived in Rhodes and waited outside the stable for them to get her horse ready that Charles spoke.

Maybe he had read her mind.

“You didn’t ask your friend about helping you look for work,” Charles said, learning over a fence and looking over at the horses, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. 

He looked so handsome; it was funny how that realization hit her out of nowhere sometimes. They could spend the whole day together and then the light would catch him a certain way, or he would do something with his body or his hair, and it would be like seeing him for the first time. 

Mirroring his movement, Yuna leaned on the fence beside him. Their elbows touched, just that, nothing more, but Charles seemed to tense even at that.

He smelled of the soaps they’d both used and something else, a scent that lingered on his skin even after he’d bathed, something she couldn’t name but which she would forever associate with him. She had that smell on her skin too in the morning, and the only word she could think to describe how it felt was erotic. It felt like being with him all over again. She probably had her own scent; she wondered if he liked it on his skin the way she did.

“I forgot. I’ll figure things out.”

“It’s important to me that you do it.”

Yuna smiled, “Why, do you wanna get rid of me already?” 

He didn’t answer right away, finished his cigarette first in long, slow drags. Maybe he  _ did _ want to get rid of her. 

“Yesterday you told me all about wanting to live in a city and have your own life, away from all of this,” He flicked the cigarette butt and brought a fresh one to his mouth from his pocket, striking the match on the bottom of his boot. “I could see it’s important to you that you do that. It’s important for me too.” 

“It  _ is _ important.” It was, that was the truth. Now that Kenji was safe, she could start making plans to leave, really plans to stay in St. Denis maybe, or go to Chicago where he was. 

“People waste away livin’ like this. You saw Miss Grimshaw’s dress and her pictures, and you see what she is now. She’s not out there robbing and killing no more but it still gets her. It made her mean and cruel.”

“I know. What are you trying to say?”

He turned his head a little to look at her, not all the way but he didn’t have that faraway look in his own like when he was watching the horses. “I don’t want you to make your choices based on what happened last night.”

“What do you mean?” 

Yuna knew exactly what he meant but it got under her skin, the way that he spoke. It wasn’t like he was saying anything that she didn’t agree with, or that wasn’t right, but it was the way he spoke about it so indifferently. Or maybe it was that she didn’t want to hear it, though that was selfish, when she hadn’t even thought about what happened last night, not really, not for what it meant. It bothered her nonetheless.

His eyes flicked over to her as though he understand exactly what she was doing, though maybe she was giving him more credit for being perceptive than he deserved.

“We slept together,” He said. He could have said something else, fucking or making love or having sex, but he’d chosen to say it that way. Yuna didn’t want to fall down the rabbit hole of analyzing everything he said. “That’s it’s own... thing. Your decisions should be separate from that.”

“You know what, Charles, the same goes for you. You should just forget about it and make your own decisions.” It sounded petty, and it  _ was _ petty and irrational but it was annoying her, the way he talked about it. 

Silence again.

“You have a temper, don’t you?” He had that half-smile on his face, the one she usually liked.

It was true, she did but it would flare up for a minute and be gone just as quick. She hadn’t had the guts here to let it out. Most of the time in the camp, she was too scared to be angry and then she was just cautious, afraid that she would say the wrong thing to the wrong person who may have an even worse temper than hers. 

“There’s something else. It would be uncomfortable for me if people in the camp knew what happened,” Charles said.

Yuna hadn’t thought that far, made herself think about it before she reacted and decided she didn’t want them to find out about it either. There were no secrets between the gang and not by choice; it was like home, in that way, it came from living with a lot of people in close quarters, everyone knowing everything about you. Some days, Charles didn’t speak to anyone; a loudmouth like Sean or a racist like Micah finding out about it would be unbearable for him. She’d seen him once grab Micah and toss him to the ground; how many fights would they get into if Micah started teasing him about this?

And for Yuna too. Maybe they would think it was open season. She’d heard a little about Abigail, the things she’d done with the men when she first joined the gang, and Yuna wouldn’t,  _ couldn’t _ do that. Maybe it would hurt Charles too, and maybe it wouldn’t, but it would certainly be painful to her, unimaginable. It was another irrational thought maybe but that was the shape it took in her mind. 

“Me too,” Yuna finally said.

A stable boy emerged with her horse, walked him around the track a few times ( _ maybe to tire him out? _ What they hell did she know about horses?) before taking him out of the fenced area. 

“Thanks,” Charles said. 

He took some change out of his pocket and handed it to the boy, taking the reins instead. Hesitantly, Yuna approached the horse, patted him on the neck the way that she’d seem Charles do to Taima.  _Dennis_ , she decided, she would name him Dennis.

“What about if I want to talk to you, or something, or if I need help?” Yuna asked. “What do I do, if people are around?”

It was all coded, and badly so. She didn’t know what she wanted to ask, not really. It was about sex, what if she wanted to be with him again? If she could, she would have been more direct with him about it but she didn’t want to hear him say no, that it wouldn’t happen. It was about spending time together too, feeling normal when things got too be too much in the camp. She wanted to infuse this with the same casual playfulness and experimentation of her previous sexual experiences, but Charles was so different from any man she’d ever fooled around before that she was left clueless for how to go about it.

Charles shrugged, “You can ask me. If you need to go somewhere, I can take you until you get used to the horse.”

_ Maybe it wasnt that badly coded after all.  _ It seemed to go over his head. Or maybe he didn’t want to answer?  _ No. Don’t go down that road _ .

Yuna saddled up, and Charles did the same for Taima, who was grazing in the grass nearby and likely grateful not to have the extra weight. The sun had set while they stood talking and for all that was awful and dangerous about this southern state, it was beautiful in the evenings. Everything was red, the sky, the ground, and the insects were starting to wake up too, to chirp and buzz around them as though guiding them home. Riding to his right and behind him, Yuna watched the muscles in Charles’ back move to the rhythm of Taima’s steps. He held the reins with one hand and fidgeted with the other, playing at the collar of his shirt, with his hair, using it to rub Taima’s neck, confident and relaxed.

She wondered if he found her beautiful, like she did him. Never had she caught him looking at her the way she looked at him, though she supposed he wouldn’t have slept with her if there wasn’t some type of attraction there. When she was fifteen, a boy had written a poem from her; it was sometimes hard to get three sentences out of Charles.

When she wasn’t looking at him, she kept an eye on the road . This time, it was easy to tell where the camp was and how to reach it from town; she couldn’t trust herself to do it entirely on her own, but she might be able to figure it out in a pinch if she needed to, even though the dark was closing in on them. Her horse followed Taima carefully until they heard a voice calling out from the trees.

“Who goes there?” 

It was undeniably Sean, on watch.

“Charles and Yuna.” 

“Where’ve you been? Arthur’s hurt,” Sean said, once they were in view.

Charles said nothing, spurred Taima little faster to get to the hitching posts; Yuna carefully prodded her own horse along to keep speed. He dismounted quickly, the tension clear on his face and his shoulders. To his credit, he paused to help Yuna down, before walking with long strides to where Miss Grimshaw sat near Arthur’s cot. It was quiet in the camp; a few people sat by the fire, a couple lay in their bedrolls unsleeping, but it was as though they were all terribly alone, lost in their own thoughts, their eyes flicking to and from where Arthur lay in his bed. Even little Jack was quiet, holding onto Abigail’s dress as though frightened.

On the cot, lay a beaten, bloody mess. His red long underwear was stained with darker marks, crimson and ugly. His face and hair were matted in it too, and there was a ugly wound on his shoulder that turned Yuna’s stomach to look at. The longer she looked at him, the more wounds she saw. His wrists and ankles looked as though they were restrained, the skin worn down by ugly scrapes. He was asleep, at least, that seemed like a mercy considering everything that had happened to him.

Seeing Arthur like this was enough to rouse Yuna of any happiness she had carried with her into the camp. Here was the almost living, barely breathing reminder of what kind of dangers living on the run came with. He was kind to her, funny in a sarcastic and dry sort of way, and it hurt her to see him like this, scared her.

Charles appeared to have been doing the same accounting, scanning Arthur’s body carefully before turning to Miss Grimshaw.

“What happened?” He asked, his voice low. “Who did this?”

“O’Driscolls,” Miss Grimshaw’s voice was hoarse, vulnerable in a way Yuna had never heard it before. 

“We need to get him into clean clothes. Grab something from his drawer,” Charles said to Yuna.

She obeyed, opening the short drawers at the foot of his bed and taking out whatever Arthur had happened to shove at the top, a shirt, some pants, socks and a fresh pair of underwear that took some rummaging to find; Charles took them and began undoing the buttons, getting them ready. 

“I didn’t want to wake him,” Grimshaw explained.

“He’s out cold. We don’t have to worry about that. Come on.”

They got to work. Yuna felt invisible and useless quickly, and retreated to the women’s sleeping area where Sadie was sitting alone, her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around herself. Arthur, Dutch, and Micah had saved her, Yuna remembered, from the hell she’d been going through in her cabin after her husband had been killed.

“Are you okay, Sadie?”

“Sure. Sit with me, kid.” 

Yuna sat close to Sadie and the two women watched silently through the night as Charles cared for Arthur. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small historical note: the anarchist movement in the U.S. at the turn of the century was incredibly active and a small part of it was militant.
> 
> As you might have noticed, I updated the tags. Eventually, Arthur/Sadie will come into play here but it's not going to be the main focus. I'll update with a real tag for them at that point.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who continues to comment, kudo, and hello to all of my new subscribers. (The next update will probably come next weekend & _may_ include fishing with Javier).


	11. X (Yuna & Charles)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revolution

Yuna

“You’re not half bad at this,” Javier said, baiting his hook.

They’d been on the water all morning in the little boat Arthur had bought for the camp, and caught eight fish already. Charles and Arthur usually supplied most of the food, but it had been nearly three weeks since Arthur was hurt and he had spent most of it sleeping through the day, not well enough to even really feed himself or sit up. Charles, Miss Grimshaw, and Hosea did most of the work of caring for him; anyone else who tried to help was usually chased off. Arthur himself didn’t seem like he wanted anyone around, was crabby and sharp-tongued. 

Even Dutch was tense, though he had always seemed so collected to Yuna. In the first few days after Arthur’s return, he’d given a speech about escaping to paradise, going to a place Fiji. Everyone by the fire had cheered along but Yuna didn’t even know what that was, until Mary-Beth explained it to her.

Yuna wasn’t a very good nurse and didn’t have the patience to sit beside a sick man’s bedside, but now that Arthur was back on his feet she wanted to help and today it meant getting food for the camp. At least fishing was something she’d done before, something that came easy to her.

It was a hot day. They’d prepared for it though. Javier wasn’t as finely dressed as he usually was, wearing a plain linen shirt that he’d half-unbuttoned, a pair of dark jeans and his boots. Yuna had found a summer dress with the rest of the women’s things. It was sleeveless and cut short at the ankle, more revealing than anything she’d felt comfortable wearing around the camp before, but it was scorching and she was grateful for it once the heat set in.

“It’s nice out here,” Yuna said. If she squinted, she could make the camp out far away on the shore. “No one really seems to use the boat to go fishing much.”

“Nobody is really interested in fishing, except me and Hosea. I was trying to teach Arthur but he doesn’t have a lot talent for it. There’s better spots nearby if you’re interested in a big catch.” Javier cast his line out. 

“It feels strange leaving camp for something like that with Arthur laid up like this,” Yuna admitted. She hung her fishing pole off the side of the boat and sat down; she would be able to see the line tugging if there was a bite.

“He will be on his feet soon. But maybe you only like to leave camp with Charles,” Javier smirked.

Yuna had learned that with Javier, she had to give as good as she got. “If I’d asked you to help me buy a horse and take me to St. Denis, would you have agreed?”

They hadn’t talked at all lately, not even so much as a good morning. In his defense, Charles hadn’t been speaking much to anyone in the camp save for Arthur, and then only a few words here and there when Arthur felt strong enough to speak. She wasn’t sure what else she expected; he had made it clear that he wanted to be discreet in the camp, but he was so convincing that it was almost enough for Yuna to doubt whether anything had happened between them at all. It made it easier now though not to blush at Javier’s teasing.

“Maybe,” He said. “It depends. What were you doing there?”

Since returning to camp, Yuna had thought of the possibility of having to divulge what was going on with Kenji. No one had asked, too concerned with what was going on with Arthur understandably, but she had decided there wasn’t much harm in it. Whatever Kenji was up to, there was no chance that it could be as bad as what the gang was up to.

“I found someone from home who’s seen my brother,” Yuna explained. “ He’s involved with a political group, they’re called  anarchists , and the person I met, my friend, she said he’s  underground .” The words felt strange in her mouth, not tied to any meaning.

“I went to a few of their meetings in Mexico City,” Javier said, “Good men and women.” 

“You know what that is?”

“Yes. I was like your brother when I was in Mexico. I saw injustice and I tried to do something about it,” His tone was different - brave, proud. “There was a Greek man who came to live in my country, an anarchist. He wrote the first book I read when I learned how to read. There is one sentence I will always remember -  _ abajo con todos los gobiernos _ , down with all governments. He built a school and educated many others, and those men travelled around the country and educated us. With their help, we organized a rebellion in my state. If your brother is an anarchist, doing that kind of work in this country is dangerous. It makes sense that he’s keeping himself hidden.”

Yuna tried to picture it, Javier taking part in a revolt in a far away country, marching with thousands of other men, Kenji’s words in his mouth. All she could see was him with the bandana covering his face, stealing her from that jail, or dressed to the nines about to rob a bank.

She could see Kenji doing it though, easily.

“What happened?”

“The bastard landowner drained a lake that the whole town depended on. 2,000 farmers rose up against him. The movement spread through  _ four _ Mexican states.”

“No, I mean, did you win?”

“I had to leave Mexico. I don’t know what happened to the farmers. I read that the leader was killed,” Javier explained. “Wait, I have a bite.” He reeled the fish in slowly, carefully. Yuna didn’t recognize many of the different kinds down here but Javier seemed pleased with himself as he took it off the hook and placed it in the bucket with the rest of the day’s catch.

“Does your brother have a woman?” He put his fishing pole down and sat across from Yuna.

Yuna smiled. “He believed that everyone had a right to sexual freedom without ownership.”

“So  _ women _ in the plural?” Javier smiled, too.

“Something like that. He never was interested in marriage.”

“That’s good. They used to tell us that marriage and children are a distraction for someone who is truly committed to the fight. You want a family, you have your compatriots. If you want to love, you love the cause. Beautiful, no?”

“For some people, sure. It sounds lonely to me,” Yuna said. Maybe that was her problem; she found it hard to love people she wasn’t related to.  _ Really _ love, not a passing attraction to boys she danced with or a warm affection like  for the women in the gang. “Is that what it was like for you?”

“Not really. I ended up here,” He smiled a little, but it seemed more pained than anything else. “I would like to meet him, if you find him.”

It was an almost terrifying thought, exposing her brother to what she’d been doing these last few months, the people she’d been living with. It was no worse or better than what Akira was doing, except she slept on the floor and Akira slept in a mansion in a four-poster bed. But to show it to Kenji was something else entirely. He was a man who lived by his principles, and she... She didn’t know what she was.

“Sure, Javier, you can meet him,” Yuna conceded. “Someone is meant to leave a note for us in Rhodes, if he comes back to town. Mr. Pearson has been checking for me on his supply runs.” 

_ Us.  _ A slip up. If Javier noticed, or cared, he didn’t show it.  _ She _ didn’t want to think in the plural. There was no  _ us _ , no her and Charles, no her and anyone else - it was just her, alone. 

“Do you still believe in all that?” Yuna asked. She fiddled with the reel on her fishing pole, it had been a while since she caught anything.

Javier nodded, “Of course. When I was a little older, I moved to a city to look for work. I worked for a few months in a  _ billar _ hall, I think it’s called pool in this country. The police captain came in every day with his deputy and got drunk with big men from the our small part of the world. One day with the judge, one day with the tax collector, with the head of the post office, a rich merchant, an army officer. If you crossed one of them, they could ruin you and your family’s life. It’s like this in this country as well. Dutch sees it and it makes him angry too. We try to help people, and to take the power from the big men here.”

“I respect that,” Yuna admitted. In a way, she felt like she was talking to him now. “And I’m proud of him, in a way, but when someone makes a decision to live like that, they don’t think of what it means for their real family.”

“ _ Real _ family,” Javier rolled his eyes,. “Do you know what your problem is?”

“ _ I _ have a problem?” Yuna laughed.

“It’s easier to blame other people for your unhappiness than to be strong. I have a family I will never see again, brothers I lost and mourn, someone I loved who betrayed me. But  _ this _ is the land of opportunity. I became a new man once I stopped feeling like a victim. You can do the same but instead, you pity yourself,” Javier explained. He was so casual about it, the way he talked, as though he wasn’t telling her how pathetic he thought she was.

Yuna furrowed her brow, “Why am I this object of analysis for you all? It’s easy to look at me and talk about what I’m doing wrong here or what I should do about my future but no one wants to look at themselves.” 

“Who is  _ you all _ ? Me and you, we’re just talking here,” Javier frowned. 

She almost told him, but didn’t. It upset her, the way him and Charles talked to her, the way they gave her advice when she didn’t ask for any. It bothered her now to think of it, how Charles had told her that sleeping together didn’t mean anything and she should continue to plan her future as though it were nothing. It wasn’t a matter of him being wrong or right, but the complete lack of regard for what  _ she _ might think or want. 

“It’s condescending,” Yuna explained, softly now. “I know you think that I’m hopeless, but I have my own thoughts. I’m not a receptor for your wisdom and advice.”

Javier put his hands up, “Hey, I’m just trying to help.”

“I know, but maybe...” It didn’t matter. The things she wanted to say weren’t to Javier. “ I don’t know what I was trying to say anymore.”

Javier nodded, pursuing his lips. “Let’s go back. We have enough fish and it’s hot out here.”

Yuna reeled in her line and put the fishing pole away, and Javier rowed them back. He had sweat through his shirt, the loose strands of his hair stuck to his face, by the time they got to the little broken down dock but he helped her unload the fishing poles and the buckets of fish.

“All that stuff I said was meant for someone else. Thank you for sharing those things with me,” Yuna said, taking one of the buckets. 

“It’s alright.” He didn’t seem alright, but she didn’t know how much to push it with Javier. “Come on, let’s finish this. We can down a little bit in the trees along the water.” 

Further down the water, away from camp, they settled down on the ground. Javier transferred all the fish to one bucket so that one could be used for the bones and skins, and they got to work. It was only when Javier started to hum to himself that she felt his mood might have improved and dared to speak again.

“Can I ask you what happened? Why you came to this country, I mean?” Yuna ventured. A peace offering.

“You can ask but it’s not a nice story,” He shrugged and, uncharacteristically, was silent for a few beats as he decided whether to continue. “We organized against the jefes políticos, the local political officials. They got a cut out of everything - moneylending, brokering marriages, taxing the merchants and farmers. Their thugs would come around every week to collect rent, and if someone didn’t have the full amount or refused to give it to them, they would be beaten or their business would be burned down.”

Javier dropped a filleted fish into the bucket and wiped the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. “We organized for three months in a poor town and I met a woman at one of our meetings. Her father had been working with some of my comrades and they gave us a lot of information about an official.” He paused again. “She was married to a tailor and had a young son. This man, the official, he deported people to the Yucatán to work on the henequen plantations as slaves. It was just another business for him. He would sweep the local jails and sell the prisoners to the planters. Her husband was a much older man and hadn’t paid rent in weeks. If he was sent to the plantation, he would have died, she said. She wanted to leave this town and come with us, but to make sure her son and husband were safe if she left them behind. I killed that official for her.” 

There were gaps in the story which Yuna couldn’t piece together, but she suspected Javier left them like that on purpose. He was entitled to that.

“You helped the town,” Yuna said.

“It was foolish,” Javier wiped his brow again. Yuna didn’t know whether it was because of the heat, or the memories. “We didn’t assassinate political officials. There is an animal in my country called an axolotl that can regrow its own head. Those men were just like that, you cut off one and another one takes its place. This man was the brother-in-law of the governor of the state. They hunted for me. Unless there is a regime change, I don’t think I will ever return to Mexico.”

_ And the woman?  _ She wanted to ask. But that was clear enough. Javier had mentioned before how he crossed through California, how Dutch had found him starving and trying to steal chickens. The woman he’d killed for was probably still in Mexico with her son and husband. Or dead. 

Yuna understood now why he had asked about Kenji’s relationships.

“It’s not that different here,” Yuna said. If she wanted to be heard, she would have to start speaking up. “You said on the boat that if you want a family, you have your compatriots and if you want to love, you love the cause. But I don’t see anyone here who is living any differently. But what happens if people have children, or they get married or grow old?” 

It didn’t seem any more sustainable than life as a revolutionary. There were John and Abigail, sure, but Abigail was always complaining about how she thought she would have a ranch by now and their relationship was anything but aspirational. 

“It wasn’t very different when Dutch first found me,” Javier conceded, “But we’re bigger now. We wanted to buy some land, before you joined us, but it didn’t work out and we’ve had a run of bad luck since. If the law gets off our back, we’ll settle down somewhere all together.”

“Fiji?” Yuna asked.

“Maybe. Why, do you have something against Fiji?” 

“Island life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is all.” 

Javier laughed.

* * *

The letter came for Yuna the next morning, brought into camp by Mr. Matthews.

Letter was perhaps an overstatement. It was a single line, nothing more, an address and a time, the numbers written out in Japanese characters.  _ 13 Bayou Road, St. Denis, 2:00pm. _

_ This is it _ , she thought. Exhilaration coursed through her at the thought of seeing Kenji again but another part, just as strong, tried to clamp down on that excitement. It wasn’t her brother’s handwriting but it wasn’t Genta’s either, but who else was there in this country who would write to her in Japanese? If what Javier said was true, then Kenji had brothers-in-arms; maybe it was one of them. Yuna tried hard not to raise her hopes.

She couldn’t go alone, she knew that. Charles was natural choice, Javier after him if he happened to be busy, but she hesitated to ask him. Eventually, she would tell Kenji what she had been up to these past few months, she couldn’t keep that from him, but she wanted to do it in her own time, in her own way. Bringing Charles or Javier with her would be too revealing, would force Yuna’s hand too early.

Taking a man was out of the question, even someone young and sweet like Lenny who would tell whatever lie she asked him to. Yuna considered the women. Miss Grimshaw wouldn’t agree or would ask Yuna to pay her for her time, Karen was too unpredictable, Abigail rarely left camp at all, and Yuna felt guilty for taking Mary-Beth and Tilly to somewhere their safety wasn’t guaranteed (though she guessed they could take care of themselves better than she could, most likely). It only left Sadie.

Lately, Sadie had taken to wearing pants and wielding a gun. She’d gotten into some trouble with Arthur in Rhodes before he was kidnapped, and came back exhilarated, confident, insisting that she be put on guard duty rotation like the men. She also had her own story of being taken in by the gang, one which paint the gang in a different light than Yuna’s own tale of kidnapping.

The woman agreed readily before Yuna could even really explain what was going on, strapped two small guns to her holster, hung a shotgun off her shoulder, and told Hosea they were heading to St. Denis for at least a night. Charles was still asleep when they left and Yuna hesitated over what to do; it felt like a betrayal to slip off when he’d been such a help to her before, might look like she’d used him on that trip, in more ways than one. She might have woken him, but then she would have to explain why she was taking Sadie and not him. In the end, Yuna left him a letter, only a few lines explaining that she’d gone with Sadie, would be back soon, and with the address just in case. She tucked it into his boots he’d laid out beside him in the open space where he slept next to the fire and left.

13 Bayou Road, St. Denis was a world away from Akira’s house. Yuna had seen a bit of the rougher neighborhoods of the city on her ride with Charles but she hadn’t gone this deep in. It was a hovel, there was no other word for it, no pretty word at least. The houses were like boxes here, small and flat and stuck together with no space in between. The streets weren’t streets here, either, just mud, so wet in some places that it felt like their horses would sink in. And that was just the start of it. Bayou Road was one of the streets which marked the boundary separating this area from the more respectable parts of the city; looking further north, the slum seemed endless. Sadie was a much more able rider than Yuna, and Dennis happily and carefully followed her horse, Bob.

“If this brother of yours is livin’ here, I don’t expect he’ll be in much of a position to help you,” Sadie murmured. Number 13 was another box house, shabbier than the others if such a thing was possible, the door nothing more than a some planks that had been nailed together.

If it were possible, her heart would have jumped right out of her chest and laid beating in the mud and filth of the ground.

Sadie scanned the street. “I don’t wanna leave the horses out here. You go ahead, and holler if you need me.” Yuna dismounted but hesitated, like a coward. “Go on then, ain’t you been waitin’ for this?”

_ I should have dressed up _ , she thought, stupidly. It didn’t matter, he was her brother, her twin, he knew what she looked like.

Yuna felt like she was walking to a noose and not to her family’s arms.

The door opened inwards on her first knock, but it wasn’t Kenji.

It was a young man her brother’s age, dark eyed and dark haired and good looking with faint white scars on his face, a shotgun held at his side and a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Yuna looked over her shoulder to where Sadie stood with the horses, her hand on the pistol on her hip. The man didn’t seem threatened by that, or in a hurry to hide the fact that he was armed from anyone who might be walking in the street.

“Yuna?” He asked.

“Yes. Is this number 13?” Yuna asked. She hoped it wasn’t.

“Yes, 13. I am Luca,” The man spoke with an accent she couldn’t place. “I take you to Kenji. But who is this?” He used his shotgun to point at Sadie, who unholstered her pistol in response.

“She’s my friend,” Yuna said, quickly. “I didn’t want to come alone.”

Luca seemed to think it over, say something under his breath in a language she didn’t understand, irritated. “Fine. We go now. But you cannot ride the horses. The streets, they are too thin, you understand?”

“We won’t leave them here.” It felt like a negotiation. Sadie would never agree to it. “We have to take them with us.”

“The streets are too thin. Come, I speak to your friend.”

He put his gun away when he stepped out of the house at least, though Sadie still looked tense as they crossed the street and approached here.

“Lady, we go now. But the streets are too thin, skinny. The horses, they stay here,” Luca said.

“I’m not leavin’ our horses behind even if it means makin’ you carry them on your back,” Sadie replied. “Come on, Yuna, grab the reins and we’ll walk ‘em.”

Yuna was beyond relieved she’d brought Sadie with her. That put an end to the negotiation and though Luca looked like he wanted to argue, he shrugged as though to say,  _ you’ll see _ , and led them deeper into the labyrinth of homes, each of them pulling their horses along.

“You Italian?” Sadie asked. Her eyes were scanning their surroundings, while Yuna’s were focused on Luca’s back.

“Yes. My English, it’s not so good. I learn.”

“How do you know my brother?”

Luca turned around, and smiled. It was a lopsided thing, but genuine. “I meet him in New York. We work together. He explain more.”

That was about as much English as he seemed willing or able to share with them. They followed along silently. Whenever Yuna threw a nervous look at Sadie, the other woman held up her hand as though to say  _ calm down _ ,  _ be quiet, it’s alright.  _ She didn’t know what she feared; if Charles was here, he would suspect this was some sort of trap and with him there, it might be. But no one would bother going to such effort to trap her and Sadie. One of the men, maybe, but not them.

The streets  _ were _ thin, alleys morelike; in some places they walked in a single file line. In other some places, they went through what from the outside looked like homes but on the inside were just carved out passageways. The horses had to be prodded to go up and down the stairs but Sadie was able to coax them with sugar cubes.

Luca stopped them inside one of these empty houses. There was nothing downstairs, save for some straw and wooden planks that covered the mud floor, and large wooden boxes. A staircase led upstairs, with no handrail.

“You go up. I stay with horses.”

“I’ll stay here, too,” Sadie said.

“Come with me.” Yuna said it before she really thought it.

Sadie smiled, “Kid, you need to grow up. Go.”

_ Had anyone ever said no to Sadie? _ Yuna wasn’t about to start. She let her feet take her upstairs, lightly running her fingers across the wall for support.

The first thing she noticed was the  stark white walls of the room. It was empty save for a table with a typewriter and piles of papers, and behind them peeked out a man dressed in black.

It took her a moment to recognize her brother. He looked different somehow, older though his face was still the same. Maybe it was his clothes, all black like Luca, or his movements, more confident, sure. He looked more like a photograph than a person. When he came out from behind the desk and smiled at her, though, the spell was broken.

She didn’t know who stepped forward first but they were in each other’s arms almost instantly. Neither of them wept, though when she imagined this moment, Yuna envisioned tears. They just held onto each other.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Kenji asked, laughing, once they’d pulled apart. He held her face, as though he couldn’t believe she was real.

“You didn’t write to us for months. Chichi sent me. I have his money,” Yuna said all at once.

“Who’s the woman?” Kenji motioned to the small open window as though to say he’d watched them arrive. There was a rifle leaning against the wall. “I thought you were coming with a man.”

“It’s a long story. We live together.” Yuna deflected, “Why did you stop writing? We thought you were dead or sick or in trouble.”

“It’s a long story,” He teased. When Yuna scowled, he acquiesced. “I  _ did  _ get in trouble. I was working on a ranch near Valentine, shoveling shit for the rich man that owned the land. He rode this massive war horse and it got spooked by a snake and reared up on him. He started to whip it and I don’t know, I just snapped and I pulled him off the horse, took the whip and starting hitting him with it.” Kenji had been whipped more than once back home; the association was clear but unspoken. “I ran off to lay low and was too scared to write. And then I met some men and started organizing with them in Boston and I couldn’t write anymore.” Said too quickly. "We don't have much time."

Now, she noticed the guns which hung his holster, hidden underneath his coat, and the scars on his hands. He didn’t look like her brother; he looked like an outlaw.

“So you were going to just... disappear,” Yuna realized.

“Yes, I am,” He admitted. Present tense. No excuses, no lies or sweet talking. That wasn’t his way. “What are you going to do? Go home?”

She thought of the fantasies she’s shared with Charles about getting a job and living in a city after she found her brother, but hadn’t thought of what it would feel like for Kenji to speak as though it was an absolute, no chance that they could go together.

“I’ll stay with you.”

Kenji quirked an eyebrow, “Me? You don’t know what you’re saying. What about that man?”

Yuna shook her head. “He’s just a friend. It’s not an option.”

“ _ This _ isn’t an option either. Not for you.”

“What about chichi?”

“Tomorrow, we sell the gold he gave you and send him a money order,” Kenji’s voice was low, perhaps aware of the two people who were waiting downstairs. “And you write him a letter and tell him you saw Akira, and that I’ve gone to South America and won’t be coming back.” How long had he been thinking about this?

“ _ South America _ ? What are you talking about?”

“Trust me. Just listen to me for once, and trust me.”

“And Genta? What about him? How did he know you were here and I didn’t?” Yuna asked, remembering how Akira said Kenji was there at the station when Genta arrived.

Kenji shrugged, “That was different. He was recruited.”

_ Fuck it. _

“You know what,” Yuna reached down and took off her right boot. She ripped at the same of the leather and turned it over on his desk, where the coins fell, one by one. It felt like a relief, like being rid of a burden. “ _ You _ can do all that, you don’t need me for that.”

Kenji eyed Yuna warily as he picked up the coins one by one and put them in his jacket pocket.

“I’ve made you angry. I’m sure whatever you’ve been up to these past few months will make  _ me _ angry so you might as well spit it out,” He insisted.

“You won’t believe me even if I tell you.”

“Try me.”

She did. Told him most everything, leaving out only the details which might hurt or expose the people she lived with. She told him of how they’d taken her from the jail when she looked for him, what it had been like living in that camp, the jobs she’d worked. Kenji, whose expressions were usually so animated, looked at her impassively and, uncharacteristically, did not interrupt.

“Leviticus Cornwall is a son of a bitch. We’ve been keeping track of those payroll stagecoach robberies. We’re working on organizing a strike,” He finally said.

“That’s what all you have to say? After everything I just told you?”

“What do you want me to say, Yuna? If you want me to apologize, I  _ am _ sorry that chichi sent you here and that you’ve been so alone. Or do you want me to display some bullshit male protectiveness?” Kenji asked. He leaned against the table and crossed his arms. “If you’re going to live in this country, you have to be tough. Did anyone teach you how to use a gun?”

“ _ A gun?  _ What are you saying right now?”

He put his hands on her shoulders. Yuna let him. “You made it all the way across the country, mostly on your own. You’ve helped rob a bank and a stagecoach. You learned how to ride a horse, I saw from the window. And you found me. I’m proud of you.”

Yuna laughed, “You are unbelievable. Do you even hear what you’re saying? What happened to you?”

“All those things I was doing back home, that was just child’s play. I thought that I could keep being the good worker and change things from within but I know now that’s not the way. Those bastards we work for, they’re the same species as men like Leviticus Cornwall and the other vampires that run the factories and the workhouses here. They’ll never change unless we force their hand. Or eliminate them. I’ve sacrificed a lot for cause, even parts of myself. ” He frowned, “Even if you’d stayed home, you would have had to do the same. And it would have been for the worst.”

“I know a man who was a revolutionary in Mexico. He told me that true commitment means that all of your needs are fulfilled by  _ the cause _ . Family, love, everything. I didn’t understand it when he said it but talking to you now I do.” Yuna realized, “You can’t help me. After this, you’re going to leave, and that will be that.”

“That’s not true. Just tell me what you want to do and I’ll help you. I’ll be back in the city soon, I’ll settle it for you in the meantime.”

“A job. Something that doesn’t mean learning how to use a gun,” Yuna insisted. “And somewhere to live. It can just be a room but a place of my own.” 

Kenji nodded, “Before you leave, go to a general store and get yourself an instruction manual to learn how to use one of these things.” He pointed to the typewriter. “Come to the city the second and fourth Sundays of the month. I’ll give you directions for how to meet with Luca. Go to him if you need anything. He will bring you to me. Alright?”

“Sure.”

“And take this.” He removed a pistol from where it was tucked into the waistband of the back of his pants and put it in her hands. When Yuna tried to pull away, he used his other hand to close around hers. “Don’t argue with me, just take it and hide it in your bag.”

She did as he said. 

* * *

 

Charles

Jack was taken at sunset and things got bloody from there.

It was the right thing to do, going after that boy, and it felt good too, to ride out together not to chase after money but to try to bring him home to his mother. It felt good to to burn that mansion to the ground, that place which had been built by the blood and the toil of slaves. 

The old woman had run back into the house as it burned. Charles had seen a lot in his life, but nothing quite like that. He hadn’t heard screams as he walked away; how could someone burn themself alive and not even scream?

There would be more dead before the boy was found. At the very least, they would have to find a new camp, given the mess they’d made. 

Charles had never been interested much in the lives of others. He’d had to make hard decisions through the years, some which he’d already paid for and others which he would one day would have to, and there were some people who had had to make even harder ones still. But as they rode back to camp, he wondered at how John could have kept his family in the gang for this long. There was baggage there which Charles didn’t understand, resentment that had been brewing for long before he joined them, but it wasn’t a life for a family. Charles’ parents had taken him on the run because there was no other place in the world for them where they could stay together, and even that hadn’t worked. But for John, Abigail, and Jack? The whole world was open to them in a way that Charles could hardly imagine.

Maybe they were waiting for Dutch’s plan to fall into place, the land he kept talking about escaping to once they got enough money together. Charles had believed it for a while, in a way that was always more hopeful than realistic, but the fantasy of that turned to ashes when Catherine Braithwaite’s body did.

Despite that, he didn’t give serious thought to the idea of leaving. There would come a time when he would have to, that was almost undeniable now, but for now he would stay, try to help however he could,  _ if _ he could. There were people he cared about who would not have as much chance of living on their one as he did, when things fell apart. He had enough faith in his own abilities but not in theirs; for now, he would try to do what he could for them.

It was a long time getting back to camp, considering the bloodbath that Arthur, Micah, Bill and Sean had walked into in Rhodes, and the likelihood that they were being hunted.  _ Sean _ . The kid was a loudmouth, more style than substance, but it was hard to think that he was gone. The day had fallen apart so quickly, as things seemed to always happen for this gang; in the afternoon, Arthur and them had gone into town for a quick job, by the evening Jack was kidnapped, and by nightfall, Braithwaite manor had burned to the ground.

He rode back with Arthur.

Charles had tried his best to keep an eye on him during the fight but Arthur hadn’t seemed to be any weaker for his experience with the O’Driscolls. The older man wracked up more of a body count than the rest of them, even John.

“It’s been a bad day. You alright?” Charles asked. 

They had decided to approach the camp from the water; it was safer that way too, they could see if anyone was approaching from the trees. The only sign of fatigue Arthur showed was a slight dip in his shoulders.

“Feel bad for those boys is all,” Arthur replied. “God knows where Jack is. And Sean, well... He ain’t even seen it comin’.”

“What happened? We didn’t get the chance to talk.”

Arthur sighed, “It was over quick. He was mouthin’ off, as usual, and the shot came from the back. Just like that. There wasn’t nothin’ any of us could do about it. At least he didn’t feel or see nothin’.”

Charles’ fear living on his own was that something just like that would happen to him, he’d be sleeping or his back would be turned and some stranger would get him. When he went on a job, he was at least prepared for the possibility; he wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was immortal, he knew there were men out there that were faster, better shots. Still though, he would like to at least see his own death coming. Not in a torturous, painful way, but at least a moment of quiet, where he could come to terms with what had happened. A shot like that though... you wouldn’t know what had happened to you until you were on the other side.

“He was young. He would have been scared if it had happened any other way,” Charles decided.

“True enough. It’ll sure be quiet without him, though. The way things went today, we’ll be takin’ off soon and they’ll be no one to tend to that boy’s grave. That’s a hard thought.”

“We’ll come back when we can,” Charles promised. “We’ll plant some flowers so he can have company when we’re gone.”

Arthur scoffed a little, “When we’re drinkin’ out of coconuts on a beach somewhere?”

“Sure. Coconuts.” 

Arthur walked his horse, Totila, a little into the water to wash the mud off him. Charles followed his lead and afterwards they stood for a while, looking out onto the dark lake. 

“I’m surprised you’re still hangin’ around,” Arthur finally said. “You joined us at a strange time, Charles. Feels like it’s been goin’ to hell.”

“I hope that’s not on account of me.”

“Nah, you know it ain’t. I reckon it has everything to do with that goddamn snake Micah. Since he’s come along, we’ve had nothing but death and bad luck,” Arthur said. “I wish you’d come along a few years ago. Things were different. More like a real family.”

“Maybe it’s better I came along when I did. Seems I can be of more use now.”

“Sure are. You like ridin’ out with us, livin’ with us?”

“Sure I do. You aren’t all that bad,” Charles said, with a smile.

Arthur returned it, though it was a weak thing. “Come on then, we oughta get back and face whatever is waitin’ for us in camp.”

What was facing them was a quiet camp, punctuated only be the sound of Abigail’s sobs. Some of the women were sitting around her, though she was inconsolable; Sadie, at least, tried to speak to her, calm her, in whispers and a hushed voice. John was in his tent, lying down, awake but silent and fuming, and only a few people lingered by the fire.

_ Yuna _ . She was sitting with Javier by the fire. He remembered suddenly the note she’d left for him in the morning about going to the city. He’d been grateful in a way that he hadn’t been awake and wouldn’t have to go with her; the night which they spent together hovered in the corners of his mind, threatening to take center stage whenever he was off his guard. To her credit, she behaved as though nothing had happened - there were no lingering glances across the fire, no flirtatious exchanges. And he’d buried himself in caring for Arthur partly to make that easier for both of them, so there wouldn’t be as many chances for it.

Embarrassment wasn’t a feeling which was familiar to him, but he felt it keenly whenever he saw her. It was a pitiful performance. He hadn’t expected anything to happen that night, even when she’d asked him to get into bed with her. It caught him so off guard that it was almost all he could think of the whole time, this reckoning with what they were doing. It would be unfair to say that he should have said no - if he wanted to say no, he would have - but he wished he’d taken his time more.

He knew too that they should have spoken about it after, but by the time he was ready too, he’d felt as though the moment had passed. He was grateful for that too; if he had to talk to her now, he wouldn’t have known what to say. 

Was it purely physical, or something more? That was perhaps what was most difficult for him to figure. He was certainly attracted to her, as he suspected many men were. She was beautiful, sweet but funny, though not always intentionally. It was her innocence too, which he’d come to terms with long ago, the extent to which she represented an entirely different life. When she’d snapped at him as they watched the horses, another side of her emerged as well, one which had sent a thrill through him.

And yet...

Charles would be the first to admit that he had no frame of reference for understanding what an intimate relationship with a woman might look like. If it meant a more functional version of what Abigail and John had, marriage and children, it wasn’t what he wanted with Yuna. To ride out everyday to kill and shoot and be shot at and leave a child and a woman behind seemed like a betrayal of everything which that love meant. He noticed how Yuna tried to nudge him towards envisioning a different life for himself, the way she held onto her own dreams. But he wasn’t quite there. To do it alone was precisely that, to be alone again. To do it with a woman was to risk everything, like his parents had, to try in vain to keep something together that likely would not. And then what?

The best possible resolution was for her to leave, to live the life which she wanted. It would be enough for him to know that, despite how things ended up with the gang, that at least she had made it out, that somewhere in this country she was alive, and still sweet and funny, and still with a temper.

And in the meantime? Something told him to take pleasure and happiness where he could find it, though he wasn’t entirely convinced by it. 

Javier headed in Abigail’s direction and Charles took his place by Yuna. He considered sitting close enough so that their shoulders might touch, but decided otherwise.

“It’s hard for me to talk to people when they’re so upset,” Yuna said, embarrassed, as though to explain why she wasn’t with the other women hovering around Abigail.

Charles nodded, “How did it go in the city?”

“Oh that,” She made a strange face, almost a wince. “I saw Kenji. He’s safe and he’s happy. Maybe not safe but happy and fulfilled, if that makes any sense. He’s going to help me find work he says but it’ll take a little time.” She smiled, just a little.

“What’s the matter?”

Yuna shrugged, “He’s different,  _ really  _ different. I don’t know. I don’t think he thinks I changed enough. Or at all, maybe.”

“That’s good.”

Yuna smiled again, sincere and a little teasing, “You think?”

“Sure it is.” He’d almost forgotten, her little flirtations. “I’m happy for you.” Charles braved a touch, putting his hand on hers, just for a moment.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is going to be canon divergent. I'm really intrigued by the clues we have in-game to what may have been a different plot (i.e. before the New Austin bug was fixed, Arthur could go and have corresponding journal entries) and I thought the Guarma chapter was poorly written so that's not going to be part of this fic.
> 
> This fic also ended up being much more Javier heavy than I anticipated (and will continue to be), so I hope that I'm able to do him justice. In Javier's recollections of his experience with leftist movements in Mexico, I did research and draw from the memoirs of activists and organizers from the 1880s/1890s who later played an active role in the Mexican Revolution. The Greek teacher he talks about is a historical reference to Plotino Rhodakanaty; one of his students was Julio Lopez Chavez who led an uprising in Mexico because of the draining of a lake.
> 
> Also, Dutch's reference to Fiji is canonical, which was wild to me. I found YouTube play through videos of him talking about it before Tahiti was referenced, which goes to show how improvised the whole thing was.
> 
> Last thing - I haven't quite figured this out yet but at some point I'm going to move to the time period of the RDR2 epilogue. It may be in a few chapters (most likely) or in a separate fic, but I'll make sure to let you know when I decide (please let me know if you have any thoughts on this).
> 
> I had a really hard time writing this chapter; I felt like there were a lot of things I needed to cover here, and weaving that plot was difficult. As always, thank you for all of your wonderful response and for kudo'ing/subscribing/commenting. Thank you especially to everyone who takes the time to comment. You're all wonderful!


	12. XI (Charles)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forms of murder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter starts with an explicit sex scene and ends with an explicit/gory depiction of violence.

_ Weeks Later _

They made love on her bedroom floor.

Charles moved her in. True to his word, her brother had found her a place to live _and_ a job. Yuna would be helping with their journal, typing up the interviews and articles that were submitted, and getting it published. They’d put her up in their version of a boarding house, a small building of flats in the slums of St. Denis where they’d broken the walls down so they were all connected. At least 15 other men and woman lived there, all young, speaking all types of different languages but somehow finding a way to communicate. It was a little like the camp in the sense that everyone was expected to chip in and share, but there was no Dutch, no Grimshaw keeping it together. 

Javier went with them and quickly fell in with a young Italian man who spoke in broken English. Charles heard a little of his story; his name was Luca, he had fled to America as a teenager, and was the only one openly armed in the house. He left them downstairs to speak, and helped Yuna with her room.

There were some pieces already there, though they needed work. The bed was missing a leg and the doors on the wardrobe needed to be reattached; it was quick work, should have taken only an hour or two, but he’d barely started on the wardrobe when he saw the lotus he’d carved for her sitting on one of the shelves.

It rearranged something inside him. 

He felt how hard it would be to return to camp without her. Her goodbyes had been relatively tearless, though Charles didn’t blame her for being happy to see the backside of them. Yuna seemed most affected saying goodbye to Sadie, Mary-Beth and Tilly but she’d shared her address with them all, told them they could visit her whenever they wanted. She made the same promise to Uncle, and Charles feared the old man might take her up on it.

Seeing the lotus reminded him of that first day when she’d been so frightened; he had doubted then whether she would be able to survive and she had. She hadn’t distorted herself in the process, become vicious or cruel or a shadow. 

It gave him hope, gave them all hope. Charles could feel it in everyone, a lightness, as though the reality of her having  _ made it _ , taken a first step to a different type of life, meant something for all of them.

She’d touched his shoulder when she saw the look on his face, and it all started from there.

They kissed. Small pecks on the mouth that moved away from the target, turned to open mouthed kisses on each other’s necks and collars. It was slow, languid, so different from the first time. She pulled her body flush against his and Charles was grateful for it; it gave him permission to wrap his arms around her in a way he hadn’t been able to in bed. Slowly, he ran his arms up and down her body. She felt small underneath his arms, as though he could close in on her carefully, tenderly and bring her into his chest, fold her up inside of him. 

Yuna had a serious, focused look on her face as she undressed him. For each piece of clothing she removed from his body, she took the same one off - a shirt for a shirt, pants for pants, underwear for underwear. They took the sight of each other in. There was no blushing, no averting their gaze; it was brave and direct and surreal to see her naked, dreamlike - the freckles which he’d seen on her shoulders were on her chest too, between her small breasts. He held them in his hands, softly at first and then more purposeful, palming them, playing with her nipples. It was the type of thing which he’d always wanted to do with working girls, but always seemed like it would be unwanted attention.

She reacted by putting her hands on his, encouraging him, opening her mouth slightly and wetting her lips as though she wanted him to kiss her again. He did, but it didn’t last long; her mouth was on his chest instead, and then down further and further, until it was on his cock. It surprised him - he almost jumped back but made himself hold still as she took him into his mouth.

Instantly, he was hard. No one had ever done that to him before; her mouth was wet and warm and soft, and she moved so slowly that he had to fight the urge not to thrust forward. When she started to touch his balls, he pulled away, afraid that he would cum in her mouth.

It went quicker after that, as much as he wanted things to stay slow and eternal. The bed was still out of commission so they lay down on the bedroom floor over the clothes they’d stripped off. It was different doing this in the light of day, not in some dark room. He was able to see her face as he entered her, guide his movements more carefully in step with her reactions. It was hard to hold himself back but he did for both their sakes, letting it drag on, going slow when all his body wanted was rapidfire movements. Yuna seemed to appreciate it, her hips moving to the rhythm of himself, a perfectly paced dance.

Her pleasure was so much different than the working girls he’d been with; hers was quiet, came out in breathy gasps as opposed to moans. Sometimes her expression seemed to border somewhere between pain and pleasure but she didn’t ask him to stop, only dug her nails deeper into his back. 

He obeyed when she asked him to go faster, kept up the pace as she closed herself around him, became almost impossibly tight and then released. It was only then that he let himself go, pulled out, laid on his back, and stroked himself until he came on his stomach with short, ragged breaths.

Charles felt like thanking her, as he lay there naked next to her, but that felt like something you would say to a working girl and not to a lover.  _ Lover.  _ That was a word he’d never used before. Is that what they were?

He cleaned himself with a handkerchief he extracted from his pants pocket, took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. 

“Can I try one?” Yuna asked.

“Sure.” Gingerly, she took one for his pack. He lit it for her. “Breathe it in with your nose, not your mouth.”

It was graceful, the way she held it, as though she didn’t want to get her hands and mouth dirty by touching it too much. 

“I know I won’t be seeing any of you as much anymore, but you should come around here more often.” She added, “If you want. I’ll be working from here, you can come whenever you feel like getting away.”

“I will,” Charles said, and meant it. It would be nice to sleep in a bed, once her bed was fixed.  _ It would be nice to sleep with her.  _ “Our camp isn’t too far, I’m sure I’ll be coming through the city plenty.”

“Dutch won’t be happy about that.”

When Yuna told him she was leaving the gang, their conversation turned into a damn near interrogation. It had been a while since someone left of their own accord and not because they were on the receiving end of a bullet. He didn’t know what they’d discussed, but Charles and Sadie were both brought into Dutch’s tent to tell him what they knew about Yuna’s brother and where she was going to live. It was only when Javier was summoned and explained what he knew about the political movement, and told Dutch that they could be allies, not enemies, that she was allowed to leave. It wasn’t as though he could keep her there, except as a prisoner, in which case it would have gotten nasty quick. 

“He’s worried you’ll go to the police. Or the Pinkertons,” Charles explained.”He has a big burden to shoulder, all of those people to take care of.”

“Well, at least there’s one less person now,” Yuna said. “It’s strange to think that without you all, I maybe would have never found Kenji. If I’d stayed in Valentine, I would have probably run out of money by now and had no way to get to St. Denis. I would’ve had to go home, if I could scrape enough together for that, and we would never have known what happened to him.” She turned on her side to face him; Charles tried hard not to look at her breasts. “I was so angry at Javier for so long. Dutch and Arthur too, everyone. But I owe you all a lot. Especially you.”

“You should give yourself more credit than that.”

“No, I mean it.” She had never shared this much with him before; the intimacy they’d shared didn’t seem to be contained to the physical. “Even if I’d found him, I don’t think I would have thought to stay in this country. If I hadn’t travelled with you, I would have never known there was any other chances out there for me than to live and die on that plantation.”

“We put you in danger. That job you went on with Javier... it could’ve gone real bad. All that coming and going from camp too, especially when we were still looking for Jack. You were lucky.”

“Not in any more danger than I would have been on my own. It feels like I’ve gone from your protection to Kenji’s. I couldn’t make it out there on my own,” Yuna said. She’d put her cigarette out after a few drags and now put her hand on his chest, played with his hair. He wanted to take her hand and kiss it.

“It would have hurt me if something happened to you when you were with us.” That was as much as Charles was willing to say. “This is a good place. Seems there’s plenty of people lookin’ out for you.”

“I _am_ lucky,” Yuna agreed. “After what happened with Jack... It scared me that even a little boy like that couldn’t be kept safe. I don’t know how they can live like that. I suppose you can’t help much having a kid, but... I don’t know. I shouldn’t talk since I don’t have my own.”

“You want children?” Charles knew that for most women, it wasn’t a matter of  _ wanting _ . It was something you did, or in the worst cases, something that was done  _ to  _ you. Living here though with these type of people, it seemed like Yuna might have a choice.

She scrunched her nose up, an expression he’d never seen before. “I don’t think so. All that, a husband and children, I don’t know if it’s for me. It seems important that you be able to walk away from something, if you don’t wanna be in it anymore. Living with someone wouldn’t be so bad, though.”

Charles was grateful she hadn’t directed the question back at him. It was a prickly thing, made thornier by the fact that they’d just made love and were lying naked side by side. Yuna didn’t look at him with yearning eyes, though, and when she spoke of living with a man, it didn’t seem like there was anything implicit in there about the man being him. 

It was getting late, and he was starting to feel restless laying around like that. If Yuna was offended that he was trying to leave so quickly, she didn’t show it. She dressed just as quickly.

“Don’t worry about the bed,” She said. “I’ll get Luca to do it.”

“I’ll come by soon to see how you’re doing,” Charles promised. 

“Stay safe, Charles.”

He didn’t have much time to think about what had happened. Waiting for him downstairs were Javier and Luca. There was a third man with them who looked so much like Yuna that it was undeniable he was her brother. 

Charles had heard so much about him; it wasn’t like he had an imagine of him in his mind but he didn’t expect him to look quite so young. He looked like a boy playing at being a man, the dark clothes, the rifle slung over his shoulder. Charles remembered that he’d been living on his own for over a year now, that he’d was living on the run (political types called it living underground but it was clear what it was); there was blood on his hands just like the rest of them. The gang killed for survival. His type killed for ideas.

“All done, Charles?” Javier asked. Looked like he’d been drinking.

“I’m Kenji.” The younger man stepped forward. Charles shook his hand. “My sister told me about everything you’ve done for her. Thank you.”

“Sure thing.”

“Kenji and Luca here, they say they have some information about our old friend, Mr. Cornwall. I’m taking them back to camp to speak to Dutch. You hanging around here, or heading back with us?” Javier stood up, unsteady. The two other men shared a look. 

“Let’s go.”

The Italian man was the more talkative of the two; he rode ahead with Javier and they chattered on about things which were far beyond Charles’ knowledge, about revolution and armed resistance. Kenji rode in silence, save for a few moments here and there where he would whistle a tune or hum something to himself. Both men had the arrogance of youth about them, a swagger that reminded Charles of Sean. They had a whole organization behind them though, whereas Sean was just one man, a kid really, now buried in an anonymous corner of the world, flowers growing on his grave.

Charles was surprised when Javier didn’t make a move to blindfold the men, or otherwise obscure the location of the camp. He made no move to either, and perhaps that was a mistake but this way at least, their conversation with Dutch would start out on equal footing and force trust between them; Kenji would know where the gang lived, but the gang knew where Yuna was. The use of Yuna as a possible bargaining chip made him feel tight under his skin.

Micah, on guard duty, greeted them with a “look what the cat dragged in,” which was ignored by everyone. It was good, Charles decided, that Micah would be stuck out here and wouldn’t be a part of whatever conversations came next; everything that man touched seemed to go to shit and end in blood.

“Hosea,” Javier called out. The men swung down from their horses and walked into the camp. Hosea sat beside the fountain in front of the decrepit house, reading a book with Jack. It felt like everyone became alert at the sound of Javier’s voice; it was had been a difficult few weeks, with Tilly being taken not long after Jack’s return and though everyone was safe, they were wary and rightly so. “I’ve brought some friends.”

“Run along now Jack, we’ll finish this later,” Hosea said softly to the boy. He painted a smile on his face for the strangers, though from the way he looked at Javier, Charles could tell he wasn’t happy. “Welcome. What can we do for you this fine morning?”

“Hosea, this is Luca and Kenji,” Javier introduced. The men stepped forward and each shook Hosea’s hand. “They have some information on Leviticus Cornwall. I think Dutch should hear it.”

“Ah, the young revolutionaries. I see it now, the resemblance is uncanny. How is your sister?” Hosea asked. It seemed friendly enough, but there was a threat running through it. 

Kenji was diplomatic, “She’s settling in. Thanks for all you did for her.”

“Of course, it was our pleasure. Now, the information?” Hosea asked.

“It’s big,” Javier insisted, “Where’s Dutch?”

“Inside with Arthur,” Hosea said, warily. He paused, appraising them. “I’m sure you won’t mind leaving your guns with Miss Grimshaw here?” The woman had walked over to investigate, and held her hands out.

Kenji and Luca exchanged some words in a language Charles didn’t know and decided to obey, handing their rifles over first and then their pistols. They hesitated, looked at each other again, and removed a small gun from each of their boots. 

“You speak Italian?” Hosea asked, cordial again, leading them into the house.

“Yes,” Kenji answered, "I'm learning Spanish too. Javier said he can help."

Unsure, Charles lingered momentarily at the door of the house. On one hand, he wanted to get as much distance from this whole thing as possible; if there was a job that needed doing, and someone that needed killing, he knew he could be distracted if he was paired with Yuna’s brother. If something were to happen to that boy, he would have to face Yuna and account for the fact that he’d survived on his own for damn near a year and was killed on his watch. It was because of that, though, that Charles felt he  _ should _ be involved, though the idea of taking that responsibility on chafed at him.

If he was delusional, he would tell himself that what happened with Yuna was just physical. It was tempting to think of it like that; there was intimacy there, sure, but it wasn’t loaded with promises of eternal (or even temporary) love. They was affection, though,  _ fondness _ as weak of a word as that was. He’d worked hard to protect her, and it felt like a betrayal to stop now.

The decision was made for him when Arthur came out of the house.

“You been exiled too?” Arthur asked, smiling.

“No, I hadn’t decided if I wanted to go in.”

“Well, they don’t want the likes of us in there. Their secrets are only for Javier, Hosea, and Dutch’s ears, apparently.” Arthur sat on the steps of the porch. Charles followed. “Hell of a resemblance to his sister. You got any siblings, Charles?” 

“No.”

“Me neither. ‘Cept for John, I suppose, but he ain’t exactly what I think of when I think of  _ brother _ . There’s more suitable words for him,” Arthur laughed.

“You’re hard on him. He’s shaped up since the boy came back.”

“Took him long enough. Speakin’ of boys, what do you think of the two in there?” He crooked his head towards the house.

“I don’t know,” Charles admitted. “They seem young, in every way. But I don’t want to underestimate them. That house has maybe 15 people living in it, and that’s just the people that work for their newspaper. In St. Denis alone, there might be three times as many as that armed and ready for a fight. They look well organized.”

Arthur nodded, “I don’t know too much about these political types but if we’re talkin’ about even just two Javiers, that’s plenty of firepower already. How are you doin’ though?”

“I’m fine, what do you mean?”

“I thought you were sweet on the girl is all,” Arthur shifted where he sat to look at Charles head on. “If you were, it might be hard knowin’ she ain’t gonna be around no more. If you were.”

Charles sighed, “I don’t know if I would put it that way but... Was it obvious?”

“No. It’s ‘cause I know you better than most, is all.”

“I care about her,” Charles admitted. “It brought out something good in me. But she didn’t belong here. It would have been harder if she’d stayed.” He tried to resist getting out from under Arthur’s gaze as he spoke; it was uncomfortable for him to share something that was so deeply personal, made him feel like he might as well be standing there naked.

“You’re smarter than me, Charles, so maybe I don’t need to say this. But it just don’t work, having one foot in this life and one foot outside it. Believe me, I’ve tried that balancin’ act and all it’s brought is pain,” Arthur said. Now it was his turn to look away. “For all his talk about Bessie, it wasn’t easy for Hosea either, bringin’ her along with us. That ain’t even a choice for you.”

“I know.”

“It comes down to whether you’re ready to step away, cut the cords of this life and start another with her. Suppose it also comes down to whether she wants you or not,” Arthur chuckled at that, a pained thing, that confirmed he was talking as much about himself as he was about Charles.

“We’re friends, more than anything else. She’s on her path, I’m on mine,” Charles insisted.

“Sure. And that mess brewin’ in there? You gonna lend your gun to her brother?”

“Better me than someone else,” Charles decided.

* * *

 

For Luca and Kenji, it was a political assassination. For Dutch, it was retaliation - and a pay day.

Charles had never had much of a head for strategy and deception. He left that to Hosea and Dutch, and heard about it only afterwards when Javier filled them in on the plan.

Leviticus Cornwall didn’t stay in the same place for long, but there was a working girl he was fond of who lived in St. Denis. She worked in the city, but met him in an apartment he kept for her when they wanted privacy, and when she didn’t want to give her cut to the house. The information the boys had gotten said that the apartment was a stash house, that he’d had a safe built inside the wall. If it was money they wanted, there was supposed to be plenty of it. If it was information, they had plenty of that too. As a gesture of good will, they shared some of it, told them what was going on in St. Denis’ underworld; they burst Hosea’s bubble, told him the banks weren’t worth their attention, and spoiled a week of work. They would turn more over to Dutch for a 10% cut of whatever was in that apartment, and for Cornwall’s corpse.

It would have been an easy job, one they could’ve finished off themselves in an afternoon, if he didn’t travel with armed guards. They waited downstairs while Cornwall took his pleasure, and their numbers were unpredictable; a couple of times, he’d showed up with only one bodyguard, but there were times when he brought up to _ten_ . Luca and Javier would handle the inside of the apartment; Arthur, Kenji and Charles the outside; and Dutch and Hosea downstairs. That was one of their conditions; that no one else from the gang be allowed to know. They secured that by staying in that room with Dutch, Hosea, and Javier until nightfall, and headed out together immediately after.

Their list of grievances with Cornwall was long. Charles got an earful of it as they rode to the city. He was exploiting the workers at the oil fields. He was exploiting the miners in Annesburg. The men and their families were living in unimaginable conditions, somewhere between death and life, while he made a fortune off their blood and toil. His latest scheme was forcing the Wapiti Indians off their land so he could drill underneath it; the reservation needed help, but was hesitant to accept the intrusion of the anarchists. Kenji told Charles he could make an introduction.

The apartment sat in the midst of tall colorful buildings that boxed each other in, sharing a courtyard space in the middle. If this was a nicer area, there would be a garden in the middle or perhaps a fountain. But this wasn’t far off from the slums where Yuna lived and the ground was just mud. 

Dutch, Hosea, Luca and Javier disappeared into the labyrinth of buildings. Kenji led Arthur and Charles up a ladder and into an empty apartment. It looked like someone had lived there, or  _ was _ living there still, bedrolls laid out on the floor here and there, some canned food, plenty of ammunition too. He supposed this was another one of their safe houses. They climbed out of the far side of the apartment into a balcony, their position shielded by some palm trees. In the corner sat a gatling gun.

“What the hell’s that?” Arthur asked.

“It’s our insurance policy,” Kenji said, settling in behind it. He got his rifle out too, and perched it on the balcony rail. With the lower half of his face covered by the bandana, Charles noticed his eyes were identical to Yuna’s. “In case the old timers can’t handle it.”

“Those  _ old timers _ have been doing this far longer than you've been alive, kid. You be careful with that gun, don’t fire it if they’re down there,” Arthur warned.

Kenji dismissed his words with a wave.

“Plenty of innocent people live ‘round here,” Arthur continued. “Poor people, from the looks of the neighborhood. Keep this clean, alright?”

“I know what I’m doing. Have you even used one of these before?”

Charles and Arthur exchanged a look, but decided wordlessly not to continue to engage. 

There was nothing left to do but wait.

It was a two hours before Cornwall appeared, with five men; he recognized him from the papers. Charles was relieved; Hosea and Dutch could handle them, no problem. Kenji, likely thinking the same thing, fell back from the gun as though disappointed he wouldn’t get the chance to use it. It was difficult to see in the darkness, the moon not half fool tonight, and they strained to watch, tense and anticipating, as Cornwall - with a bouquet of flowers for his woman - walked into one of the buildings. A few moments more and a light flickered in the apartment window and the killing began. 

The guards were milling around, their hands on their guns, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. Hosea and Dutch appeared from the shadows and slit two of their throats. Dutch was quick, managed to get a third in the back before the other two noticed. Kenji and Charles dispatched those with a single shot to the head. It was quick, clean, organized. 

Charles looked over at Kenji to see how he would react but what he could see from under the bandana was expressionless. 

“The old timers are loading the bodies into a wagon, we’ll dump them in the swamp,” Kenji slung his rifle back over his shoulder, and picked up a bag that had been sitting under the gatling gun. “Come on.”

“Well, don’t I feel useless,” Arthur whispered to Charles.

Charles frowned, “You should feel lucky you didn’t have to take a life tonight.”

Kenji led them across the balcony, straddling the rail and hopping into the next one. Not quite as slim as him, it took Arthur and Charles longer, earning them a few groans and eyerolls, but it was only a few moments before they were facing the apartment Cornwall was headed for.

The door was closed. They waited outside it, one, two, three beats, before Arthur carefully turned the knob.

Cornwall lay on the floor of the sitting room, practically gutted. This wasn’t Javier’s work; he was far more careful, could kill a man with a one inch cut if he got him in the right spot in the neck. The man certainly looked dead, and the apartment looked like it was owned by someone with money to burn. The furniture belonged in a palace, decorated with gold leaf, trinkets and baubles on every surface. They could make a fortune if they had the time and a way to get it all out. 

A woman emerged from inside the apartment, dressed in a gold dress that matched her surrounded. She didn’t so much as flinch when Charles and Arthur pointed their guns at her.

“Kenj, can I leave yet?”

“Yeah, I’ll get you your money tomorrow. Thanks a lot,” He pulled the bandana off his face.

They lowered their guns. Javier and Luca emerged, carrying stuffed sacks, their faces uncovered; the Italian man was soaked in blood.

“Sure thing.” Carefully, stepping over body, the woman took her gloves from a table by the door and put them on. It hit Charles; this was the woman he’d gone to see with Yuna, the one who owned the whorehouse. The realization came to her just as quickly, and she smiled, “I remember you. I should’ve charged you for those sheets.”

Javier and Arthur looked at Charles, as though to ask what she was talking about, but Akira opened the door, a small crack just enough to squeeze through, and was gone.

“I got the safe open, there’s five more bags in there. Grab ‘em and let’s get out of here,” Javier said. 

They did as he said, leaving Luca and Kenji in the front room. There was no time for talk, they needed to move quick and get back to camp; only two shots were fired, sure, but there must have been maybe 50 people who lived in the apartments around and they would’ve heard it. The safe was in the bag of the apartment, looked like it had been hidden behind a portrait, a landscape painting of a French general that sat on the ground. Javier had made quick work of the contents of the safe, loaded everything into cloth bags. 

“Mostly cash and jewelry, and a lot of it,” Javier explained.

Charles and Arthur took two each and the men made to leave the apartment.

In their absence, Luca and Kenji had gotten to work on Cornwall’s body. There had been saws in that bag that Kenji carried, Charles realized now, and they were using them to cut him up. His head had been detached already and they’d put it on the couch, his eyes open, watching them.

“What the hell are you doin’?” Arthur growled. “Goddamn, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

It was horrific. They had killed the man, gutted him like a fish, and that was bad enough. To violate his body like this and then to display his head as some sort of joke was something else. Rage flooded through Charles; he had to physically brace himself to keep from hurling towards them.

“You could have at least left his body for his family to bury,” Javier said. He seemed angry too, but spoke more gently.

“Who said we’re not going to give him back to his family?” Kenji asked, half smiling.

“Jesus. Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Arthur looked like he was on the verge of exploding. Javier lead them out, down the staircase and through an alleyway to where their horses waited. Dutch and Hosea had already saddled up.

“How’d it go, boys?” Dutch asked. He was smiling, both of them were, having been spared the sight of that corpse. Charles handed them his bags, and they mounted up.

“Just peachy,” Arthur spat. “I’ll see y’all back at camp."

Charles spurred Taima off and rode fast, north, away from his friends and from that city and the bloody room and the watching eyes of a dead man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick update this time around, but likely won't be another one until next weekend.
> 
> I'm going to be wrapping up the events of this time period in the next chapter or two. I've tentatively set this at 14 chapters for now but I'll know for sure by the next chapter. With the last chapter, I'll be posting a link to the sequel (which will be taking place a few years into the future.)
> 
> I haven't felt so inspired to write in so long and I owe all to you, who have been so generous with taking the time to subscribe, kudo and comment.


	13. Link to Sequel

The time has come, a little sooner than I expected, [for the sequel](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18332534/chapters/43398752). After some thought, I decided to link it like this so that anyone who wants to continue this journey with me will have an easy time finding it.

I've been writing fic for years but it wasn't until this that I've been so inspired and so challenged as a writer. It's been incredibly fulfilling for me and got me through some really tough personal issues the last couple of months. I can't thank you all enough for making this such a wonderful experience for me.


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